To Determine the Efficiency of Polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) and Polyacrylamide (PAM) as Drag Reducing Agent for Water Injection

Water injection can be applied as secondary recovery method to repressurize the reservoir to maintain oil production and thus, can maintain the production rate. One of the main aims during water injection process is to increase the volume of water injected into the reservoir. However, the injection of water is often limited by pumping capacity on the platform or well site and the capacity of injection tubing or pipelines due to friction pressure loss. Moreover, it is commonly found in the pipeline system, water transported may exerted over long distance which allow to more pressures loss. Thus, this limitation affects the flow assurance of the well production. The main aim in this project is to study the effectiveness of using Polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) and Polyacrylamide (PAM) as Drag Reducing Agent for Water Injection by manipulating the polymer concentration from 100ppm to 800ppm and see the effect of Reynolds number and flow rate obtained. Drag reducing Agent (DRA) have been used in the oil industry for several years, both in oil and water based systems to enhance the flow assurance in the production line which caused by drag. Drag may contribute to pumping loses, decreasing in production capacity and potential of corrosion effect. Due to that, a lot of researches have been done to investigate the most effectiveness drag reducing agent that can be used to overcome this matter. In this project, an open flow experiment setup is fabricated which is mainly consist of 12.25m long of 1” diameter galvanized pipe and 0.5m long of 2” diameter of injection point. Two pressure gauge is used to monitor the pressure drop obtained along the 4m test section for each concentrations tested. Besides, a commercial DRA is used to compare the performance of tested polymer (PVP and PAM). The results show that PAM gives most significant drag reduction percentage with 21.9% compare to PVP, 18.8%. However, this commercial DRA shows greater drag reduction up to 30% with comparison with the optimum concentration of both polymers. Besides, it also observed that an increase of Reynolds number will increase the drag reduction percentage before the polymer start to degrade at too high flow rate. Thus, it is concluded that the ability of PVP and approve the PAM as a potential drag reducing agent which can be used effectively in water injection system. Besides, both tested polymers performance is not far behind with the DR% obtain by the commercial DRA.