Sharif Digital Repository

Water channeling due to reservoir heterogeneity is an important factor that could decrease the displacement efficiency of a water flooding process. In this study, the ability of polyacrylamide/ chromium acetate system on altering water path in heterogeneous layered media was investigated using glass bead micromodels. After the relevant parameters were optimized, a series of water and gel injection experiments were conducted in glass bead micromodel. The experimental results show that sweep efficiency is basically controlled by gel strength. The gel strength has a minor impact on the oil recovery from the higher permeable zone, whereas the oil recovery from the lower permeable zone is a... 

Viscous fingering is one of the main challenges that could reduce areal sweep efficiency during waterflooding in oil reservoirs. A series of waterflooding experiments were carried out in a Hele-Shaw cell at ambient temperature during which areal sweep efficiency was estimated and techniques to ease the fingering problem were examined. The onset and propagation of viscous fingers were monitored as a function of both injection rate and injection/production positions. Image processing techniques were utilized to quantitatively investigate the propagation of fingers. The experimental results show that, under specific conditions, increasing the number of finger branches could improve the areal... 

Viscous fingering is one of the main challenges that could reduce areal sweep efficiency during waterflooding in oil reservoirs. A series of waterflooding experiments were carried out in a Hele-Shaw cell at ambient temperature during which areal sweep efficiency was estimated and techniques to ease the fingering problem were examined. The onset and propagation of viscous fingers were monitored as a function of both injection rate and injection/production positions. Image processing techniques were utilized to quantitatively investigate the propagation of fingers. The experimental results show that, under specific conditions, increasing the number of finger branches could improve the areal... 

With the decline in oil discoveries over recent decades, it is believed that enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technologies will play a key role to meet energy demand in the coming years. Polymer flooding is used commonly worldwide as an EOR process. In this work, we propose the synthesis of protected polyacrylamide (PAM) nanoparticles (PPNs) with a hydrophobic polystyrene (PSt) shell by one-pot two-step inverse emulsion polymerization, in which the PSt shell was created by surface polymerization. The shell protects the active PAM chains from premature degradation caused by the harsh environment in the reservoirs, controls the release of the chains as rheological modifiers, and additionally, it...