Polymer Floods

Water is generally less viscous than oil, so it is more mobile, and waterfloods may be unstable. This
means that small heterogeneities in the formation can lead to early breakthrough of water. First we look
at fluid mobilities, which were mentioned in Topic 5.

What are the benefits with polymer flooding?

The method produces additional oil by improving the displacement efficiency and increasing the volume
of reservoir that is contacted by increasing the viscosity of the water.

What are the problems with polymer flooding?

The adsorption in polymer flooding can be severe, as it is irreversible, and the adsorbed polymer
occupies a large pore volume. In this case, it is hard to recover a considerable amount of oil and the
formation permeability is decreased, leading to less recovery factor.

Mobility is defined as relative permeability divided by viscosity:

where f is fluid (o or w).

Then the mobility ratio for two fluids (e.g., oil and water) is defined as:

If M < 1 a flood is stable, but if M > 1 it is unstable. Of course, the relative permeability varies with
saturation. Usually M is evaluated using the end-point relative permeabilities – i.e. the maximum values.
For example, if krw,max = 0.25, kro,max = 0.85, w = 1 and o = 3, then M = 0.88, which is stable.
However, if krw,max = 0.25, kro,max = 0.85, w = 1 and o = 10, then M = 2.94, which is unstable.

Buckley-Leverett Theory and Polymers

In practice, there are several effects that arise when polymer is injected into a reservoir. For example, the
polymer may be adsorbed onto the grains of rock, the relative permeability to water may be reduced or
the polymer viscosity may be lowered due to shearing. These effects can be taken into account in
commercial numerical simulators. Here we look at a simple example to show the effect of increasing the
water viscosity in Buckley-Leverett displacement.
Figure 11 shows the resulting fractional flow curves for different viscosities. The solid fw curve (red, in
colour) is for a low viscosity oil (o = 2.5 cP) and water (w = 1.0 cP); the fw curve with the short dashes
(blue) is for a more viscous oil (o = 10.0 cP), and the same water viscosity; thirdly, the fw curve with the
long dashes (green) is also for the more viscous oil, but the water viscosity has been increased (w = 8.0
cP) to represent water with polymer. Compare the Welge tangents for these three curves (Topic 2,
Section 5), and then estimate what the flood profiles should look like.

From Figure 12 you can see that the case with the water flood with the heavy oil has a lower shock front
height and water breaks through earlier. On the other hand, the case with the polymer flood has a high
shock front height and breaks through later.
Note though, that in reality, fractional flow theory for the injection of polymer into a reservoir is slightly
more complex, because there will be a connate water “bank” preceding the front of water with polymer.