Modeling the gelation time of sulfonated polyacrylamide/chromium triacetate hydrogel based on screening of the effective parameters

A system of Polymer gel is widely used in oil production wells in order to reduce unwanted water production. The efficiency of these systems in porous media depended on various parameters such as the composition concentration and the media condition of the polymer gels performance. So it is necessary to study the effective parameters and their interactions in order to increase the efficiency of systems of polymer gels. Therefore، in this research، two-level factorial design as a statistical method was used to study the effective parameters on the gelation time of polymer gel containing sulfonated polyacrylamide copolymer and chromium triacetate as crosslinker to not only reduce the number of experiments in the lowest time and cost، but also present the most effective parameters among the eight studied parameters (pH، CaCl2 concentration، crosslinker/co-polymer ratio، NaCl concentration، co-polymer concentration، sodium lactate، nanoclay and thiouria) on gelation time of polymer gels using 32 bottle testing experiment and finally by modeling the process، the optimum condition is presented. The presented model in 99% significant to predict the gelation time of the polymer gel based on the effective parameters. The results showed that sodium lactate، co-polymer concentration، nanoclay، thiouria and crosslinker/co-polymer ratio are the main effects respectively. Also، among the interactions between parameters، the interaction of sodium lactate and crosslinker/co-polymer ratio has the most effect on the gelation time of the hydrogel.