SPE 113396

Polymer Flooding in Saline Heavy Oil Environments

Subhash Ayirala, Peter Doe, Michael Curole, and Robert Chin, Shell
Copyright 2008, Society of Petroleum Engineers

This paper was prepared for presentation at the 2008 SPE/DOE Improved Oil Recovery Symposium held in Tulsa, Oklahoma, U.S.A., 1923April2008.

This paper was selected for presentation by an SPE program committee following review of information contained in an abstract submitted by the author(s). Contents of the paper have not been
reviewed by the Society of Petroleum Engineers and are subject to correction by the author(s). The material does not necessarily reflect any position of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, its
officers, or members. Electronic reproduction, distribution, or storage of any part of this paper without the written consent of the Society of Petroleum Engineers is prohibited. Permission to
reproduce in print is restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words; illustrations may not be copied. The abstract must contain conspicuous acknowledgment of SPE copyright.


Abstract
Most previous commercial polymer flooding successes have used salt-sensitive synthetic polyacrylamides. Because of
viscosity loss when the polyacrylamide contacts high salinity brines, applicability of this conventional polymer flooding
process can be impaired in environments that lack a relatively fresh water resource. The problem is more serious with more
viscous oils, where the increased polymer requirement using high TDS water as injectant can make otherwise attractive
projects uneconomical. In this paper, we propose a new process for using either sea water or other high TDS brine, which
permits high viscosity to be reached, while at the same time reducing the amount of polymer required to achieve a given
flood performance. Adoption of the proposed process in a typical field application will reduce both capital and operating
costs, and will also mitigate the detrimental effects of saline formation water on polymer flood performance. Potential
polymer savings, process flow and polymer-mixing schemes, as well as flood performance improvements, associated with the
new process will be discussed. The new process can potentially extend polymer flooding to cost-challenged saline heavy oil
environments by turning difficult primary or waterflood projects into cost-effective polymer injection projects.

1. Introduction
Nearly two-thirds of original oil in place remains unrecovered in crude oil reservoirs even after the application of
conventional primary depletion and secondary waterflood technologies. This is mainly due to inefficient macroscopic
volumetric sweep efficiencies caused by the poor conformance control of waterfloods and low pore scale microscopic
displacement efficiencies resulting from the capillary trapping of oil, attributed mainly to various interfacial and surface
forces. Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) processes using chemicals are presently considered as one of the most important
technologies for improving the oil recovery from such reservoirs.
Chemical flooding processes involve the injection of polymer (P), alkaline-polymer (AP), surfactant-polymer (SP), and
alkaline-surfactant-polymer (ASP) into the subsurface reservoirs to recover the large amounts of unswept oil. All these
chemical EOR processes, especially the polymer injection processes, were widely used in the field until the mid 80s, with
the crude oil prices fluctuating at around $30/bbl. However the sharp decline in oil prices since 1986 resulted in a spectacular
drop in the number of field projects as well as in chemical EOR oil production. This changing scenario of chemical EOR in
the United States is clearly depicted in Figures 1 and 2, where the number of chemical EOR projects and chemical EOR
production are plotted over years, respectively, for the past two decades. The published data on US EOR from Moritis (2006)
has been used for this comparison. As can be seen in Figures 1 and 2, both the number of chemical EOR projects and
production in the US have been gradually declining over the years to become almost extinct by the year 2002. The
distribution of chemical EOR projects among countries worldwide is shown in Figure 3 for the year 2004. From Figure 3, the
dominance of China in worldwide chemical EOR can be clearly seen with nearly 75% of total chemical EOR projects
reported in China.
The oil industry in the US is presently showing renewed interests in chemical EOR for application in several onshore and
offshore reservoirs due to the growing energy demand. The recent high oil prices of about $90/bbl also show a profitable
economic climate in favor of implementing chemical EOR field projects. Furthermore, there have been some heavy oil
offshore discoveries worldwide where oil production and recoverable reserves are limited by the crude oil viscosity.
Implementation of a suitable improved oil recovery process early in reservoir life is critical for economic development of
these reservoirs. Steam injection thermal EOR processes in offshore environments are restricted by high capital costs, and
extreme complexity of the subsurface process. Implementation of chemical injection EOR processes, especially polymer
injection, may be considered as one option to enhance the economic viability of these offshore heavy oil projects.
Advancements in polymer mixing and injection technology and experience gained from several of the past onshore field
2 SPE 113396
projects also favor the implementation of polymer injection processes in offshore environments.

2. Polymer Injection Process
Typically polymer injection processes utilize polymeric additives to flood water at concentrations ranging from 500 to 2,500
ppm (Chang et al., 2006). The addition of polymers to water increases the aqueous phase viscosity thereby lowering the
water-oil mobility ratio. This favorable mobility ratio aids in flood conformance control and hence improves the vertical as
well as areal sweep efficiency. Polymer added to injected water can also reduce porous media permeability and affect
fractional oil flow for more efficient oil recovery. Though two types of commercial polymers are available in the market
today for utilization in polymer injection field projects: (1) polyacrylamide, a synthetic partially hydrolyzed polymer
(HPAM), and (2) xanthan gum, a polysaccharide biopolymer, only one among them, i.e., synthetic polyacrylamide has found
wide application.
Both the synthetic and biopolymers have their own advantages and disadvantages. The comparison between synthetic and
biopolymers is shown in Table 1. As can be seen from Table 1, polyacrylamides are relatively less costly and can adsorb on
the rock surface to reduce permeability and develop good viscosities in fresh water. However, they are not suitable for high-
salinity water and are sensitive to shear degradation. On the other hand, xanthan gums possess excellent viscosifying power
in high-salinity waters and are relatively insensitive to shear degradation. However, they exhibit formation-plugging
characteristics and are easily susceptible to bacterial degradation. Hence, prior filtration of xanthan gums to avoid formation
plugging and addition of bactericides to prevent bacterial degradation are necessary, which ultimately increase the costs. As a
result of these high costs associated with xanthan gums, polyacrylamides have received much attention in oil industry for
polymer injection improved oil recovery applications.
Numerous successful polymer injection projects have been reviewed and reported in the literature (Jewett and Schurz,
1970; Chang, 1978; Needham and Doe, 1987; Du and Guan, 2004; de Melo et al., 2005). Table 2 summarizes the key
parameters of ten polymer flood field projects. These parameters include reservoir rock and fluids characteristics and polymer
slug size and concentration, and the resulting incremental oil recoveries. All these field projects used polyacrylamide
polymer, except the one at East Coalinga where a biopolymer, xanthan gum was used (which was eventually a failure). All
these projects were carried out in sandstone reservoirs and relatively fresh injection water was used for polymer dilution. Out
of these ten projects, three were carried out in secondary mode, among which one was a failure. The average incremental oil
recovery in these secondary projects was about 26.5% OOIP. The remaining seven polymer floods were tertiary mode
operations, out of which two were failures. These tertiary polymer projects resulted in an average incremental oil recovery of
about 10.4% OOIP. This summary of data on successful field projects indicates the potential benefits of polymer flooding
when applied in suitable/right candidate reservoirs either in secondary or teritiary stage.

3. Salinity Dependence of Polyacrylamides
Most of the previous commercial polymer flooding successes have used salt-sensitive synthetic polyacrylamides in relatively
fresh water. Because of viscosity loss when the polyacrylamide contacts high salinity brines, applicability of this
conventional polymer flooding process can be impaired in environments that lack a fresh water resource (for example, only
seawater is the available water resource in an offshore environment). The problem is more serious with more viscous oils,
where the increased polymer requirement using high TDS water as injectant can make otherwise attractive projects
uneconomical.
Polymer flooding has been successfully applied with viscous oils up to 150 cp (Taber et al., 1997). However, with the
availability of higher molecular weight polyacrylamides, heavier and more viscous oils (up to 1,000 cp) in high permeability
reservoirs are being considered for polymer flood implementation. The salinity of available source water plays a major role in
the polymer selection and concentrations to be used.
The salinity of source water has a dramatic effect on the viscosity of HPAM polymer solution. Figure 4 shows the effect
of salts NaCl, CaCl
2
and MgCl
2
on polymer solution viscosities. As can be seen in Figure 4, viscosities decrease rapidly with
the increase of monovalent and divalent cation content in the polymer solution. It can also be noticed that the divalent cations
have a more detrimental effect on polymer solution viscosities compared to monovalent ions. Therefore, higher polymer
concentrations (and hence higher cost) are required to obtain desired viscosities with polyacrylamides when seawater
(~35,000 ppm TDS) is used for making up the polymer solution. This appears to be the major reason for using relatively fresh
injection water for making up the polymer solution in conventional polyacrylamide field projects. Even though biopolymers
are insensitive to salts, bacterial degradation and high costs associated with them hinder their usage in commericial field
applications.
The summary of water treatment and polymer mixing operations followed in nine polymer field projects is shown in
Table 3 (pertinent reservoir data and source references for these projects can be seen in Table 2). As can be seen in Table 3,
relatively fresh water was used for preparing the dilute polymer solutions in almost all these projects. The main sources of
fresh water are nearby aquifers or rivers. Hence no rigorous water treatment technologies were used for water pre-treatment
(tretament involved only conventional softening, and filtration). Oxygen scavenger (to remove oxygen), and biocide or
bactericide (to prevent bacterial growth) were the common additives to the treated water. The polymers used were in both
liquid as well as in dry powder form. The liquid polymers used were in water-in-oil emulsion, requiring a chemical called
activator to be added to invert this emulsion during mixing. The dilution of dry powder or liquid polymer with injection water
SPE 113396 3
to the desired concentration was carried out at mixing stations and then distributed to the injection wells through injection
lines. Based on this discussion, it can be concluded that polyacrymides have long been used in the oil industry with relatively
fresh injection water for both successful and economic field applications. This has resulted in the conventional wisdom that
polyacrylamide injection is likely to be noneconomic when seawater/other high TDS water is the only aqueous injectant
available, which therefore calls for development of newer processes/technologies to extend the use of polyacrylamides to
difficult environments that lack fresh water resource.
Hence, in this paper, we propose a new process for treatment of either sea water or other high TDS brine, which permits
high viscosity to be reached with conventional polyacrylamides, while at the same time reducing the amount of polymer
required to achieve a given flood performance. This new process is called the designer water process and it uses
nanofiltration and reverse osmosis membranes to alter seawater chemistry for providing a water of lower salinity or lower
hardness or both for polymer flooding. Adoption of the proposed process in a typical field application thereby can reduce
both capital and operating costs due to reduced polymer requirements. This designer water process has possible applicability
in other improved oil recovery processes, such as alkaline-surfactant-polymer (ASP) flooding and thermal floods (boiler feed
water for steam).

4. Designer Water Process
The designer water process is a two-step process and includes both nanofiltration (NF) and reverse osmosis (RO) processes.
Both these processes are pressure driven separation processes. In the designer water technique, seawater (35,000 ppm TDS)
is first processed using nanofiltration and then through reverse osmosis for enhanced performance. The summary of ionic
compositions of feed waters used and the product water qualities obtained from each step of designer water process is shown
in Figure 5.
Nanofiltration membranes will allow only monovalent ions to pass through, while rejecting the scale forming divalent
ions such as sulphate, calcium and magnesium. These membranes are primarily developed to achieve high divalent ion
rejection at low transmembrane pressures. As a result, the product water from the nanofiltration unit will be substantially
reduced in sulphate, and hardness ions before going into a reverse osmosis unit. Nanofiltration membranes are highly
resistant to fouling due to larger pore size and smaller membrane thickness.
Reverse osmosis (RO) is a well-developed technology of 1960s and is widely practiced today in desalting of either sea or
brackish water. During the last two decades, significant developments have been made in reverse osmosis technology and
this process can produce water that is essentially free of dissolved salts.
The usage of hardness and sulphate free feed water to the reverse osmosis unit further reduces the scale formation and
hence result in low fouling of RO membranes for improved process efficiency. Additionally since the RO membrane is not
processing seawater but high salt water the feed pressure and RO membrane case pressure requirements are reduced. Given
that the NF unit operates at a lower pressure than the RO unit, preventing or minimizing the fouling of the RO unit will
reduce the associated power requirements, minimize membrane replacement, and minimize daily operator attention. The
antifouling nature of NF membranes coupled with low fouling of RO membranes due to the absence of divalents and the
sulphate in the feed water require less or almost no chemical use in the designer water process.
Also, small fractions of the reject stream (1-2%) from the NF membrane being rich in calcium, magnesium can be used as
a blend stream with RO permeate to tailor the salinity and divalent ion concentration in the final product water. Furthermore
a small amount of NF water may be bypassed around the RO to control salinity of the injection water. Thus the designer
water process also provides the flexibility of tailor making the injection water composition to suit the specific reservoir
characteristics and to match the reservoir needs to have an optimum cost for the polymer.
As can be seen from Figure 5, the nanofilter product water will contain around 23,000 ppm TDS with low ppm Mg and
Ca when seawater of 35,000 ppm TDS is used as feed. This soft, essentially seawater salinity water is one source for
improving the viscosity of a polymer solution made from seawater.
The second step in processing would be to pass the NF product water through a reverse osmosis membrane which will
reduce the water salinity to less than 500 ppm TDS with almost negligible amounts of divalent ions (< 1 ppm each of Ca and
Mg). A water of this composition would have near maximum build in viscosity for a given amount of polymer. A water of
this composition would have to be injected into a relatively clay-free reservoir to avoid swelling and de-flocculation of clay
minerals. If need be, some ions can be added back in to prevent clay swelling or special completion techniques to prevent
near wellbore clay swelling may be utilized.
The comparison of viscosities of HPAM polymer solutions made using seawater and the designer water is shown in
Figure 6. From Figure 6, it can be seen that for obtaining the desired polymer solution viscosity of 80 cp, about 3200 ppm of
polymer is required in seawater. However, this polymer concentration reduces to about 1200 ppm when designer water is
used as makeup. This clearly indicates that significant reduction in polymer requirements can be achieved by switching the
makeup water from seawater to designer water in a polymer flood application.
Figure 7 shows a simplified process flow of the designer water and polymer mixing process for a 100,000 bpd polymer
flood case. Prior to the membranes, seawater is lifted, chlorinated, filtered, and de-oxygenated. Approximately twice as much
seawater must be lifted for a given injection rate because of the rejection rates of the membranes. Note, however, that the
processing up to and including the nanofilters would be typical for a 'normal' seawater-based waterflood that includes
sulphate removal.
4 SPE 113396
In addition to the polymer, a preservation package designated as ITW (isopropyl alcohol and thiourea in water) may be
added to mitigate degradation of the polymer due to oxygen and other ions such as iron. Efforts are under way to minimize
the ITW package as it requires significant weight and space and can increase the operating costs considerably.
The low TDS water obtained from designer water process can also be used in other EOR methods: ASP (alkaline-
surfactant-polymer) floods, and thermal floods. For ASP floods, the low salinity water not only reduces the amount of
required polymer, but also reduces the amount of alkaline agent required as adverse reactions with hardness are eliminated. In
thermal floods, the low hardness water can be used as boiler feed water.

5. Modeling of Designer Water Polymer Flood
As a potential application, a designer water enabled polymer flood was investigated in this study for a generic PROSPECT 1
reservoir. The generic PROSPECT 1, for the purpose of this paper, has five key characteristics as listed below. The important
point to note here is the high insitu viscosity of reservoir oil (>100 cp).
Offshore where seawater must be used
Formation water salinity of 100,000 ppm
>1 Darcy average permeability
>100 cp oil viscosity @ reservoir temperature
Reservoir temperature is low enough for polymer flooding
In PROSPECT 1s case, designer water obtained by treating the seawater would be used as water source for polymer
flooding. Hence, a series of simulations were run to illustrate the potential impact of designer water on polymerflood
efficiency. The simulator chosen was REVEAL (Petroleum Experts Inc., 2007), because of its capability to handle shear
dependence of viscosity as well as the impact of salt and divalent ions.
The in situ brine for these simulation examples has a TDS of 100,000 ppm, of which 6,000 ppm is the divalent ion
content (calcium and magnesium). The simulations used a high molecular weight, 30% hydrolyzed polyacrylamide. A
representative set of viscosity results for such a polymer is given in Figure 8, which shows results for progressive dilution of
1500 ppm polymer, made up in designer water, with increasing amounts of reservoir brine. In designer water, the polymer
has a viscosity of some 600 cp at 1 sec
-1
shear rate. Diluted only 1% with reservoir brine, this drops to 200 cp. At 20%
dilution, the viscosity is less than 10 cp.
For the more realistic second example, these results are implemented directly. For simplicity, in the first example, shear
dependency, polymer retention and ion exchange, all of which can be important in real polymer flood evaluations, were
turned off. Salinity and divalent ion dependence are, however, turned on. The effect of eliminating shear dependency in
particular is that the polymer required to achieve a given viscosity decreases.
The first example is a simple, homogeneous, linear system containing 100 cp oil. Four alternative polymer flood scenarios
were examined. All assume continuous polymer injection starting from time zero. The simulations differed only in the
assumption about the ionic composition of the makeup water, but in each case polymer concentration was adjusted to give an
initial viscosity of 100 cp. These scenarios were 100% formation water (1600 ppm polymer), seawater (1100 ppm polymer),
nanofiltered seawater (400 ppm polymer) and full designer (nanofiltration plus reverse osmosis) water (100 ppm polymer).
Results, presented as recovery factor vs PV water injected, are shown in Figure 9. For comparison, a water flood curve for
the 100 cp oil, and a waterflood curve for oil viscosity = 1 cp are also shown. As we would expect in a simple case like this,
the various polymer flood scenarios all ultimately approach the performance of the 1 cp oil displacement. They do not,
however, reach that performance immediately, because they only achieve the design viscosity once the salinity in the
reservoir is conditioned to the design salinity. The bigger the difference between injected and in situ brine compositions, the
longer this takes. In a real reservoir, this is influenced by dispersion, ion exchange and dissolution of reservoir minerals, but
the key point is that small changes in salinity have a disproportionately large effect on a polymer formulation, which is
designed to work in the fresher injection water.
These considerations mean that the full designer water system takes longer to 'catch up' to the ideal displacement than a
system designed for high salinity, an effect which can be seen in Figure 9. The trade off is that the polymer usage is much
reduced. If we calculate a polymer usage efficiency for the displacements of Figure 9, representing oil recovered per unit of
polymer injected, and normalize these to the efficiency of the seawater/polymer flood, we obtain results like those in Table 4.
This indicates that treatment of the water can have a significant impact on the efficiency of polymer usage.
This example is not realistic, being much too ideal, but it illustrates two key points. The first is that, if you design
alternative formulations to deliver the same viscosity, then roughly equivalent oil recovery is expected from the alternatives.
The choice is therefore likely to be a matter of economics. The second observation is that most of the benefit in improved
efficiency of polymer usage is expected from the reverse osmosis stage of the designer water process. This is true even in this
simple example, but it also applies for more realistic cases.
Example 2 involves a sector model of a more realistic reservoir situation. Polymer retention, ion exchange and shear
dependency of viscosity are now turned on, and there is a high salinity aquifer present, providing a continuous source of high
salinity water. Flow barriers exist in the model, leading to a much less perfect sweep by the injected polymer. Oil viscosity is
> 100 cp. Each of these changes makes a polymerflood more challenging.
SPE 113396 5
The efficiency data, again normalized to seawater = 1, is in Table 5. In this case, there is little benefit to only performing
nanofiltration, but adding the reverse osmosis step doubles the efficiency of polymer usage. Note that in this example the
polymer concentration is always 1000 ppm. Note also that the relative gains from the designer water are less as compared to a
seawater-based flood than they were in the ideal first example. This reflects the greater difficulty of conditioning the reservoir
to an appropriate salinity with all of the 'real world' problems turned on. Nevertheless, all simulations we have run to date
suggest a significant advantage for fluids based on the full designer water approach.

6. Summary and Conclusions
Processing seawater using a designer water process (with nanofilter and reverse osmosis membranes) will yield water
streams, which can significantly reduce operating costs in an offshore seawater polymer flood. These cost reductions are the
result of the improved viscosity building capacity of conventional polyacrylamide polymer with waters that are lowered in
salinity and or lowered in divalent cation hardness content.
Simulation runs carried out using REVEAL for a generic high oil viscosity ( 100 cp) and high connate water salinity
(100,000 TDS) reservoir indicate that designer water would result in much lesser polymer usage for similar oil recovery
improvements. The results from the simplistic first simulation example showed that normalized polymer usage efficiency
with designer will be considerably higher (about 16.8 times) compared to that of sea water. The results from more realistic
second simulation example showed doubling of polymer usage efficiency with designer water. The maximum benefit for
polymer flooding appears to be associated with the reverse osmosis step of the designer water process, as demonstrated by
both the simulation runs.
With several heavy, viscous reserves offshore, a designer water enabled polymer flood can significantly add to the scope
for recovery as shown for a generic PROSPECT 1 reservoir. The designer water process therefore can potentially extend
polymer flooding to cost-challenged saline heavy oil environments by turning difficult primary or waterflood projects into
cost-effective polymer injection projects. The low TDS waters obtained from the designer water process can also be utilized
in ASP flooding, and thermal floods.

Acknowledgements
We sincerely thank Shell International Exploration and Production Inc. for providing us permission to publish this paper and
we also acknowledge several of our collegues for their kind cooperation during this project.

References
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91787.
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18092.
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of Common Polymer on Field Test with 20% Closed to the Result of Laboratory Test in Daqing. SPE Paper No. 108684.
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Moritis, G. 2006. CO
2
Injection Gains Momentum. Oil and Gas J. 104 (15) 37-57.
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Putz, A.G., Bazin, B. and Pedron, B.M. 1994. Commercial Polymer Injection in the Courtenay Field, 1994 Update. SPE Paper No. 28601.
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6 SPE 113396
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Table 1: Comparison between Synthetic and Biopolymers




















Table 2: Summary of Key Parameters for Ten Polymer Field Projects

secondary; essentially secondary, but initiated at a water cut of 80% in water flood; secondary, but a failure; - not available
Note: incremental oil recoveries are not reported for projects that are failures









Lithology
Perm.
(md)
Temp.
(
o
F)
Type Conc. (ppm)
Slug size
(PV)
Wilmington USA sandstone > 1,000 135 30.8 - 29,000 polyacrylamide 250 0.230 - Krebs, 1976
Pembina Canada sandstone 25 125 1.0 12000 250-300 polyacrylamide 1000 0.040 - Groeneveld et al., 1977
Marmul * Oman sandstone 15,000 115 80.0 3000 600 polyacrylamide 1000 0.630 25-35 Konig et al., 1988
Oerrel ** Germany sandstone 2,000 136 19.0 167000 fresh polyacrylamide 1500 0.120 23.0 Maitin and Volz, 1981
Chateaurenard France sandstone 2,000 86 40.0 400 400 polyacrylamide 1000 0.400 12.5 Putz et al., 1994
East Coalinga *** USA sandstone 50-480 100 25.0 1000-9000 770 xanthan gum 400 0.264 - Tinker et al., 1981
Sleepy Hollow Regan USA sandstone 2,580 100 21.0 32054 718 polyacrylamide 750 0.480 8.0 Christopher et al., 1988
Daqing China sandstone 870 113 9.0 7000 433-1227 polyacrylamide 1000 0.357 12.5
Demin et al., 1995
Wankui et al., 2000
Shuanghe China sandstone 420 167 7.8 5060 362.5 polyacrylamide 900 0.154 9.8 Tielong et al., 1998
Daqing
(High Concentration)
China sandstone 870 113 9.0 7000 508 polyacrylamide 2000-2500 0.300 8-10
Fulin et al. (2004 & 2006)
Liu et al., 2007
Field Name
Oil Vicosity
(cP)
Reservoir Characteristics
Connate
water
salinity
(ppm)
Polymer Characteristics
Reference
Incremental Oil
Recovery
(% OOIP)
Location
Injection
water salinity
(ppm)
Sea Water Low High
Fresh Water High High
High Moderate / High
Divalent cations, transition metal ions,
oxygen, and oxidizing agents
Moderate
(> 250
o
F)
High
(> 160
o
F)
High temperature
Low High microbes, and enzymes
High Low
Flow through pipe lines, injection pumps,
valves, and porous media
High Low Retention and mechanical entrapment
High Low Wellbore plugging
Moderate
($1.10 - $1.25)
High
($3.50)
Raw costs without shipping and handling Cost / Pound
monovalent/divalent cations
Bacterial Degradation
Shear Degradation
Adsorption on the Rock
Fluid Injectivity
Viscosifying Power
Property
Chemical Degradation
Thermal Degradation
Reason
Polyacrylamide
(Synthetic Polymer)
Xanthan Gum
(Biopolymer)
SPE 113396 7
Table 3: Summary of Water Treatement and Polymer Mixing Operations for the Field Projects

Note: - not available or not reported

Table 4: Summary of Polymer Usage Efficiency obtained for Various Makeup Waters
from the Simplistic First Simulation Example
Brine Type
Polymer
(ppm)
Normalized Efficiency
Formation Water 1600 0.7
Sea Water 1100 1.0
Nanofiltered Water 400 3.4
Designer Water 100 16.8


Table 5: Summary of Polymer Usage Efficiency for Various Makeup Waters
Obtained from the Realistic Second Simulation Example



















Process O2 scavenger Other Additives Polymer Form Mixing Mode Mixing Location
Wilmington Wilmington Gaspur Aquifer - - - 29,000 dry powder - -
Pembina North Saskatchewan River softening Sodium Hydrosulfite none 250-300 dry powder
mixing of dry powder with injection
water
at the injection pump
Marmul Nearby Aquifer none Ammonium Bisulphite biocide 600 liquid emulsion
mixing of liquid polymer with
injection water
mixing station
Oerrel Fresh water none none biocide fresh liquid emulsion
mixing of liquid polymer with
injection water
mixing station
Chateaurenard Produced water
special treatments to remove oil
and avoid oxygen entry
none biocide 400 liquid emulsion
mixing of liquid polymer with
injection water
mixing station
East Coalinga USBR Feather River Project filtration Sodium Sulfite bactericide 770 liquid solution
dilution of polymer concentrate with
injection water
mixing station
Sleepy Hollow Regan Republican River filtration none none 718 liquid emulsion
mixing of liquid polymer with
injection water
mixing station
Daqing Fresh water wells none none bactericide 433-1277 dry powder
mixing of dry powder with injection
water
mixing station
Shuanghe Tap water none chemical scavenger none 362.5 dry powder
mixing of dry powder with injection
water
mixing station
Water Pre-treatment
Project Water Source
Polymer Mixing
Salinity
(ppm)
Brine Type
Polymer
(ppm)
Normalized Efficiency
Sea Water 1000 1.0
Nanofiltered Water 1000 1.1
Designer Water 1000 2.0
8 SPE 113396

0
50
100
150
200
250
1
9
8
6
1
9
8
8
1
9
9
0
1
9
9
2
1
9
9
4
1
9
9
6
1
9
9
8
2
0
0
0
2
0
0
2
2
0
0
4
2
0
0
6
Year
N
u
m
b
e
r

o
f

C
h
e
m
i
c
a
l


E
O
R

P
r
o
j
e
c
t
s

Figure 1: Chemical EOR Projects in the US Figure 2: Chemical EOR Production in the US





China
France
India
Indonesia
Venuzula
Total Number of Projects = 24

Figure 3: Worldwide Distribution of Chemical EOR Projects in 2004








0
5,000
10,000
15,000
20,000
25,000
1
9
8
6
1
9
8
8
1
9
9
0
1
9
9
2
1
9
9
4
1
9
9
6
1
9
9
8
2
0
0
0
2
0
0
2
2
0
0
4
2
0
0
6
Year

C
h
e
m
i
c
a
l


E
O
R

O
i
l

P
r
o
d
u
c
t
i
o
n

(
b
b
l
/
d
)
SPE 113396 9
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000
TDS (ppm)
V
i
s
c
o
s
i
t
y

(
c
P
)
NaCl
CaCl2
MgCl2


Figure 4: Effect of Salts on 1500 ppm HPAM Polymer Solution Viscosity (10 sec
-1
and 105
o
F)


Element ppm
Mg 1300
Ca 420
Na 10800
SO
4
2700
TDS 35000
Seawater
Nanofilter
Reverse Osmosis
RO Product
Designer Water
Element ppm
Mg < 50
Ca < 25
Na < 9000
SO
4
< 10
TDS 23000
Element ppm
Mg <1
Ca <1
Na <150
SO
4
<1
TDS 350
Element ppm
Mg 1300
Ca 420
Na 10800
SO
4
2700
TDS 35000
Seawater
Nanofilter
Reverse Osmosis
RO Product
Designer Water
Element ppm
Mg < 50
Ca < 25
Na < 9000
SO
4
< 10
TDS 23000
Element ppm
Mg <1
Ca <1
Na <150
SO
4
<1
TDS 350


Figure 5: Summary of Feed and Product Water Qualities from Designer Water Process











10 SPE 113396
























Figure 6: Effect of Removing Salts from Seawater on Viscosity of HPAM Polymer Solution at 100
O
F


Lift Filter De-Ox NF RO
Mother
Solution
Injection
O2
Scavenger
Hypochlorite
Biocide
ITW
230,000 BPD
100,000 BPD
OB
OB
OB
Polymer
Lift Filter De-Ox NF RO
Mother
Solution
Injection
O2
Scavenger
Hypochlorite
Biocide
ITW
230,000 BPD
100,000 BPD
OB
OB
OB
Polymer

Figure 7: Simplified Schematic of Designer Water Makeup and Polymer Mixing Process




0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000
Polymer (ppm)
V
i
s
c
o
s
i
t
y

a
t

7
.
3

s
e
c
-
1

(
c
P
)
Seawater
Designer Water
Significant reduction in polymer quantity
required to achieve the desired viscosity
SPE 113396 11
1
10
100
1000
1 10 100 1000 10000
Divalents Content (ppm)
V
i
s
c
o
s
i
t
y

@

1

s
e
c
-
1

(
c
P
)
Formation Brine
NF + RO
NF Only


Figure 8: Dependence of 1500 ppm HPAM Viscosity on Divalent Ion Content of Makeup Water


0
20
40
60
80
100
0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0
PV Water Injected
O
i
l

R
e
c
o
v
e
r
y

(
%

S
T
O
I
I
P
)
1 cp oil 100 cp oil
100cp Formation Water 100cp Sea Water
100cp NanoFiltered Water 100cp Full Designer Water


Figure 9: Recovery Factor vs. PV Injected for Waterfloods and Comparison Polymerfloods
Designed for 100 cP Initial Viscosity