Improving the Viscosity of Partially Hydrolyzed Polyacrylamide (PHPAM) Solution for Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) Application

Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) is a promising technology for increasing crude oil production, especially from old wells. Polymer flooding is one of the techniques used in EOR in which the water-soluble polymer is added to increase the viscosity of the injected fluid. However, this technique has not been implemented in Indonesia due to the unavailability of locally-synthesized polymers. Therefore, this research aims to synthesize polyacrylamides and their partially-hydrolyzed derivatives and to study the possibility of their utilization for the EOR application. Various polymerization conditions using potassium persulfate (KPS) as initiators have been realized and the resulting polymers were characterized using FTIR spectroscopy and rheology measurement. It was found that higher monomer concentration resulted in higher viscosity-average molecular weight of polyacrylamide. Further study revealed that the hydrolysis of polyacrylamide by alkaline solution significantly increased the viscosity of 1000 ppm solution from 1.5 to 145.40 cP at room temperature, which is comparable to one of the commercial products. These results showed that the simple synthesis and hydrolysis method could be effectively used to produce water-soluble polymers for the EOR application.