Experimental Study on the Effect of Different Injection Rates of Biopolymer Extracted from Natural Waste Material (Coconut Residue) as Drag Reducing Agent (DRA) in Water Injection Well: Formation Permeability Reduction

Applying drag reducing agent (DRA) into water injection system has improved injection capacity of wells by reducing the friction that occurs inside the well tubing. However, the synthetic polymer that is widely used in the industry have raised the environmental concern as its chemical content are believed to be harmful to the environment. This has generate the idea of using natural biopolymer DRA instead of the synthetic polymer. In this study, grated coconut residue has been chosen as the source of biopolymer to produce the natural DRA due to its high content of cellulose. Many studies were conducted to understand the behavior and optimize the performance of DRA when it is being applied in the pipeline. However, the effect of DRA on the reservoir formation has been less studied, especially in the near wellbore zone. A water injection system using core flood equipment was used in this work. Injection rates were varied so that the relationship between permeability reduction and the rates could be established. It is found that low injection rate of 1cc/min gives more permeability reduction compared to high injection rates at 5cc/min, while synthetic DRA solution gives more permeability reduction compared to natural DRA solution.