Sand Control: Applying Hydrogels as New Method in Oil Reservoirs

The ability to control sand production wells in oil reservoirs in the world is a big industrial challenge. Therefore, so many efforts have been made by using different methods to reduce the amount of produced sand and subsequently to increase the amount of oil production. In this study, in order to control sand production, the hydrogel injected as a chemical method have been used for the formation strength as a new method. Hydrogels were prepared from Acrylamido Propyl Sulfonated Acid as polymers and chromium (III) acetate as a crosslinker, ensuring their injectivity ability were used for the consolidation of sand in the reservoir. In order to select and design the suitable hydrogel structure of the polymer and
the crosslinker focusing on gelation time, lifetime, injectivity into the sand bed capacity and gel strength, some experiments such as bottle, rheology and compressive strength tests were performed. Finally, the efficiency of the selected hydrogel was evaluated by applying the sand packed core-flooding tests to reduce sand production. The results showed that the compressive strength increased about 20 times after injection of 1 pv hydrogel. In addition, the hydrogel injection decreased the sand production by 90%. However, water permeability decreased in sand packed 77 times after polymer gel injection and 4 times for oil permeability. Due to the severe reduction in water permeability of the sand packed, hydrogel with double efficiency can be used to reduce the water production and control the sand production in oil and gas reservoirs.