Analysis of Alginate-like Exopolysaccharides for the Application in Enhanced Oil Recovery

Alginate-like exopolysaccharides (ALE) can be extracted from granular sludge, which is produced during aerobic granular sludge waste water treatment as a waste product. Processing the waste is a costly operation. It is believed that ALE consist mostly of alginates. The chemical and mechanical properties of alginates are potential for the application in drilling ?uids, hydraulic fracturing ?uids and polymer ?ooding. Under certain conditions alginates are stable and viscous. The ob jective of this thesis is to analyse ALE for the application in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) by means of rheology and core ?ood experiments. Rheology experiments were conducted to study the viscous behaviour of ALE and core ?ood experiments were conducted in Bentheim sandstone cores to study the ?ow behaviour of ALE in porous media. Furthermore a model was proposed in order to predict retention of ALE in porous media. It was found that during the injection of ALE in porous media, clogging occurs. At the current state of knowledge ALE is not a suitable candidate for the application in EOR. However, ALE could be interesting for the application in drilling and hydraulic fracturing ?uids.

Subject

alginate-like exopolysaccharides
biopolymers
injectivity
porous media
numerical model
adsorption
filtration
clogging

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Student theses

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master thesis

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