Performance Evaluation of Viscosity Characteristics of Enhanced Preformed Particle Gels (PPGs)

Preformed Particle Gels (PPGs) treatment is one of the most promising solutions to improve conformance control in mature water flooded oil reservoirs. It is very important to be able to evaluate and predict performance of PPGs in porous media. In this paper, we will first introduce new class of enhanced PPGs designed for harsh reservoir conditions (high salinity and temperature) and then present experimental laboratory results looking at viscosity performance of PPGs during injection and flow in porous media. A central composite experimental design coupled with a simple method using a set of 150-cm tubes, were used to comprehensively evaluate the functionality of PPGs rheological behavior under different flow conditions in fractures. The effects of five variables including salinity of water used to prepare the swollen PPGs, tube internal radius, injection velocity, size of PPGs and temperature on the PPGs viscosity were examined. The results showed that PPGs viscosity primarily depends on the injection velocity, tube internal radius, temperature, PPG size, salinity and their two-level interactions. It is also worth to mention that the effect of temperature on PPGs viscosity has not been investigated in previous studies. Finally, a simple mathematical model was introduced to predict the PPGs viscosity at reservoir conditions