Schizophyllan as Potential Environmental Friendly EOR Polymer for A Selected Malaysian Field

Abstract

This paper presents a comprehensive laboratory evaluation of Schizophyllan as an EOR polymer candidate for a selected peninsular Malaysia field. The polymer was chosen due to its well-known structure and properties. Schizophyllan, which originally produced from Schizophyllum commune was evaluated for its performance under controlled laboratory condition and the results are discussed accordingly. Rheology analysis at 96°C, showed that, at low concentration of 250ppm, Schizophyllan can achieve 11 cP which is about 90% more than live crude oil viscosity. Thermal Stability of this polymer was also excellent for the entire 3 months of exposure at reservoir temperature, whereby only 2.8% of viscosity degradation recorded with a very clear solution observed representing the heat and hardness resistance of the polymer. Injectivity test using actual native core indicated that, there was no plugging tendency or injectivity problem observed from the coreflooding test based on its low RRF value of 1.5. The resistance factor value of 9.93 indicates that this polymer is effective in viscosifying the water and injectable into the core. Dynamic adsorption study also showed that only 0.09mg/L of polymer was found adsorbed to the actual native core, despite the presence of clay in the core. Hence, from all the analysis, it was found that Schizophyllan meets the technical requirement to be applied as an EOR polymer