Application of organic cross-linked gel system for mitigating CO₂ leakage from high temperature reservoirs

Abstract

This study aims to mitigate CO₂ leakage in high-temperature reservoirs using an organic cross-linked gel system. The engineered fluid system was evaluated by a quantified rheological methodology and pore-plugging analysis. A sulfonated hydrolyzed polyacrylamide polymer and organic crosslinkers, hydroquinone and hexamethylenetetramine, were utilized for forming the fluid gel systems. The pressure cell assembly has been employed for the gel analysis at an elevated temperature of 110°C under a pressurized CO₂ environment. The high-temperature viscosity vs. aging time data acquired under continuous shear conditions ( _ γ = 50 s−1 ) was ingeniously categorized into three regimes: (1) an induction period characterized by a lower linear slope of dμ/dt = 15-50 mPa·s/h; (2) a ‘non-linear’ transition regime; (3) a rapid cross-linking period characterized by a higher linear slope, i.e. dμ/dt ≥ 350 mPa·s/h. The ‘gelation time’, defined as the point of initiation of the rapid-crosslinking period, was successfully modelled for variations in polymer concentration utilizing first-order kinetics. The new outcomes of the high-temperature rheological investigation under the pressurized CO₂ environment were compared with the traditional bottle-testing approach and oscillatory rheological studies. The core flooding results showed excellent plugging efficiency ( > 99%) for both sub-critical and super-critical CO₂ injections beyond the ‘gelation time’ at 110°C.

Keywords

CO₂ leakage mitigation / High-temperature reservoirs / Sub-C CO₂ phase / Super-C CO₂ phase / Organic cross-linkers / Gelation time / Peclet number

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Mohd. Shahnawaz Alam: Writing-original draft, Validation, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Data curation. Rishabh Tripathi: Writing-original draft, Data curation, Methodology. Sandeep D. Kulkarni: Validation, Supervision, Writing-review & editing, Investigation.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests.

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the Civil Engineering Department of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur providing the rheometer and Deysarkar Center of Excellence in Petroleum Engineering, IIT Kharagpur for providing infrastructural and monetary support. Finally, the authors express their deep gratitude to the anonymous reviewer(s) for their detailed review and valuable input, as well as for significantly enhancing and refining this work.

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