A Comprehensive Study on Factors Affecting Preformed Particle Gel in Enhanced Oil Recovery

The Preformed Particle gels (PPGs) have widely been used and injected in low permeability rich oil zones as diverting agents to solve the conformance issues, distract displacing fluid into out of sorts swept zones. Besides, they also reduce the permeability of thief zones and high permeability fractured zones. However, the PPG propagation and plugging mechanism are still unpredictable and sporadic in manifold void space passages. PPGs have two main abilities, first, it increases the sweep efficiency, and second, it decreases the water production in mature oilfields. However, the success or failure of PPG treatment largely depends on whether it efficiently decreases the permeability of the fluid paths to an expected target or not. In this study, the different factors were studied that affect the performance of PPG in such reservoirs. PPGs were treated in different ways; treated with brine, low salinity, and high salinity brine. Also, their impacts were investigated in low/high permeability, fractured reservoirs, and void space conduit models as well. From the literature, it was revealed that the sweep efficiency can be improved through PPG, but not displacement efficiency and little impact of PPG were found on displacement efficiency. On the other hand, Low salinity water flooding (LSWF) can increase the displacement efficiency but not sweep efficiency. Hence, based on the above issues, few new techniques and directions were introduced in this study for better treatment of PPG to decrease water cut and increase oil recovery.