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Preparation of Hydrophobically Modified Copolymer Nanostructures as Viscosity Increasing Agents for Enhanced Oil Recovery

Shaban, Masoom | 2016

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  1. Type of Document: Ph.D. Dissertation
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 49042 (48)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Institute for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology
  6. Advisor(s): Ramazani Saadatabadi, Ahmad; Ahadian, Mohammad Mahdi
  7. Abstract:
  8. Among chemical enhanced oil recovery (CEOR) methods, polymer flooding has the highest commercial potential. However, the most widely used conventional polymers such as partially hydrolyzed polyacrylamide (HPAM) are not applicable for high temperature and high-salinity reservoirs. To overcome above mentioned problems, in this work, a series of water- soluble hydrophobically modified polymers (HMPs) nanostructures comprising styrene (hydrophobic monomer) and acrylamide (hydrophilic monomer) have been produced. The copolymers have been synthesized using inverse miniemulsion synthesis method by adjusting synthesis conditions to optimize solution characteristic of copolymers for applying under high temperature and high salinity conditions. Chemical structure of the copolymer and the incorporation of the hydrophobic co-monomer into the hydrophilic polymer backbone were characterized by 1H NMR, FT-IR, TGA, fluorescence spectroscopy and elemental analysis. The size and morphology of the copolymer nanoparticles were investigated by field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) and dynamic light scattering (DLS). The rheological behavior of copolymer has been studied under high salinity and high temperature condition in comparison with unmodified polyacrylamide (PAM) and HPAM. The rheological measurements show that contrary to most polymers, solution viscosity of the produced copolymer in presence of monovalent and divalent ions increases, which makes it promising copolymer for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) process. According to rheological measurements, increasing the hydrophobe content up to 10 mol % makes an enhancement in viscosity of resulting copolymer copolymer due to hydrophobic association in aqueous solutions with formation of hydrophobic microdomains, which become more pronounced above the critical concentration of copolymer in water. Finally, the oil recovery factor (RF) during polymer flooding using synthetic copolymer and commercial HPAM was measured through micromodel test. The result shows higher RF for synthetic copolymer in comparison with HPAM under high temperature and high salinity conditions. Moreover, we have synthesized same copolymer and also PAM and polystyrene with the novel and facile continuous aerosol-photopolymerization method in gas phase for the first time. To this end, the monomer droplets were generated by an atomizer, then photopolymerization was initiated ‘‘in flight’’ by ultraviolet (UV) irradiation of the aerosol monomer droplets containing photoinitiator within the average aerosol residence time of 30 s in the photoreactor. Finally, the obtained polymer particles leaving the photoreactor were collected in powder form on a filter membrane. Aerosol-based methods possess many advantages in comparison to the other solution-based techniques, such as low environmental pollution and caring out at room temperature, simple fabrication steps, low fabrication cost and green processes. These methods can also avoids the requirement of surfactants and solvents, and produce directly solvent-free dry powders with a high purity and spherical morphology in a continuous process
  9. Keywords:
  10. Enhanced Oil Recovery ; Polymer Flooding ; Hydrophobically Modified Polymers (HMPs) ; Miniemulsion Synthesis Method ; Photopolymerization ; Aerosol Processing

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