Polyacrylamide hydrogel application in sand control with compressive strength testing

Abstract

Abstract Sand production is one of the major problems in sandstone reservoirs. Different mechanical and chemical methods have been proposed to control sand production. In this paper, we propose a chemical method based on using polyacrylamide/chromium triacetate hydrogel to investigate sand production in a synthetic sandpack system. To this end, a series of bulk experiments including the bottle test and rheological analysis along with compression tests were conducted. Experimental results indicated that the compressive strength of the sandpack was increased as much as 30 times by injecting 0.5 pore volume of hydrogel. Also, it was found that the increases in cross-linker and polymer concentrations exhibited a positive impact on the compressive strength of the sandpack, mostly by cross-linker concentration (48 psi). Hydrogel with a higher value of cross-linker could retain its viscoelastic properties against the strain which was a maximum of 122% for 0.5 weight ratio of cross-linker/polymer. The presence of salts, in particular divalent cations, has a detrimental effect on the hydrogel stability. The maximum strain value applied on hydrogel in the presence of CaCl2 was only about 201% as compared to 1010% in the presence of distilled water. Finally, thermogravimetric analysis and its derivative showed that the hydrogel could retain its structure up to 300 °C. The results of this study revealed the potential application of the hydrogel to control sand production.

Keywords

• Sand control
• Rheology
• Hydrogel strength
• Compressive strength
• Sandpack