Engineering Commons^™

Effect Of Salt Valency And Concentration On Shear And Extensional Rheology Of Aqueous Polyelectrolyte Solutions For Enhanced Oil Recovery, Anna V. Walter, Leidy N. Jimenez, Jelena Dinic, Vivek Sharma, Kendra Erk

School of Materials Engineering Faculty Publications

The injection of polymer solutions into an oil basin can lead to enhanced oil recovery (EOR) by increasing the microscopic sweep of the reservoir, improving the water-oil motility ratio, and thus leading to greater yield from oil fields. In this contribution, we characterize both shear and extensional rheological response of aqueous solutions of partially hydrolyzed polyacrylamide (HPAM), the most commonly used polymer for EOR, for velocity gradients in both the flow direction (extensional) and perpendicular to flow (shear) arise in EOR applications. As HPAM is a charged polymer, to better emulate the environment in oil basins, the rheological response was …