Performance Evaluation of Nanocellulose-Engineered Robust Preformed Particle Gel upon Extrusion Through 1 to 1.5 mm Bead-Packed Porous Media

Preformed particle gel (PPG) holds promising potential for conformance control in fractured tight reservoirs as it enables mitigation of fracture channeling with insignificant leak off to matrix. However, conventional PPG is very susceptible to shrinkage, breakage, fatigue, and even degradation when extruding through narrow fractures due to its weak and brittle network. This hampers its development and application in the oilfields. This paper presents a comprehensive laboratory evaluation of a new kind of nanocellulose (NCF)-engineered robust particle gel (N-PPG) for this application. The results demonstrated that the presence of NCF noticeably improved the mechanical properties of N-PPG. The swelling kinetics and swelling ratio (SR) of N-PPG were almost independent of salinity. We packed porous media using millimeter-sized glass beads to replicate proppant-filled fractures after hydraulic fracturing. As anticipated, N-PPG exhibited a greater resistance factor (Fr) and residual resistance factor (Frr), and its plugging efficiency reached more than 99.3%. N-PPG was hardly broken even after extruding from pore-throat geometries with Dg/Dp up to 21.4, whereas the control PPG was notably ruptured at Dg/Dp = 14.7. Herein, this tough N-PPG could provide a solution to conformance control of fractured tight reservoirs.