Description

Crude oil and other petroleum products are crucial to the global economy today due to increasing energy demand approximately (~1.5%) per year and significant oil remaining after primary and secondary oil recovery (~45-55% of original oil in place, OOIP), which accelerates the development of enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technologies. Polymer flooding through hydrophobically associated polyacrylamides (HAPAM) is a widely implemented EOR-technique, so they attracted much attention on both academic and industrial scales. Hydrophobically associating polyacrylamide (HAPAM) prepared by free radical emulsion polymerization of acrylamide (AM) monomer, divinyl sulfone as hydrophobic crosslinked moiety and surfmers, to chemically anchor a surfmer and hydrophobic crosslinker moiety onto the back bone of acrylamide chain. After that, polymeric nanocomposite was prepared through copolymerization of prepared HAPAM with different molar ratios of silica nanoparticles through one shot synthesis. Rheological properties for the prepared composites were evaluated. Wettability evaluation carried through quantitative and qualitative techniques where the results indicate novel polymers ability to alter rock wettability from oil-wet to water- wet.

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