Extended: Development of Low Shear Polymer Flow Control

Offentlig prosjektsammendrag

The primary objective of the R&D project is to develop and design a low shear process, more specifically a new valve for low shear injection of polymer which reduces the mechanical degradation of the polymer and thereby reduces the loss of viscosity with 50 % compared to the state of art. As a consequence, the injected polymer solution has significantly higher viscosity than what is possible with the technology of today, and thus increase the oil recovery from a given reservoir. In a polymer injection operation, there are several critical locations were mechanical degradation can occur, were the most important locations are in the injection valve. During this project, the critcal locations have been investigated and identified, and it has been developed new technical solutions to overcome this problem. The new technical solutions has been implemented in a new Low Shear Polymer Valve Prototype, with optimized geometry which treats the polymer solution more carefully than state of the art injection valves. This reduces the amount of degradation of the solution. It has been documented in this project, through a prototype test, that the new valve can reduce mechanical degradation with more than 50 % compared to conventional chokes. In the prototype test, the prototype was tested in parallel to a standard valve. The prototype gave 10 % degradation at 40 bar, while the standard valve gave 60 % degradation at the same conditions. A reduction in mechanical degradation from 60% to 10%, can either reduce the cost of chemicals by approximately 25% or increase the oil recovery from a given reservoir with 7 - 10 percentage point.