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Flow Behavior Characterization of a Polyacrylamide based Friction Reducer in Microchannels Yongpeng Sun, Baojun Bai, Yinfa Ma, and Ralph Flori Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., Just Accepted Manuscript • DOI: 10.1021/ie5042403 • Publication Date (Web): 03 Dec 2014 Downloaded from http://pubs.acs.org on December 9, 2014
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Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research
Flow Behavior Characterization of a Polyacrylamide based Friction Reducer in Microchannels
Yongpeng Sun†, Baojun Bai*†, Yinfa Ma‡, Ralph Flori Jr † †
Department of Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering, Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla, Missouri, 65409 United States
‡
Department of Chemistry, Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla, Missouri, 65409 United States
ABSTRACT: Horizontal well and hydraulic fracturing have been proved to be an effective technology to increase the recovery of shale gas reservoirs. During a fracturing treatment, a pair of main fractures is firstly generated perpendicular to wellbore direction. As fluids continue to be pumped, more micro-sized fractures are generated near the main fractures and form a fracture network. This micrometer sized fracture network has much more contact area with the matrix than traditional single pair of fracture, and holds majority of the productivity potential of shale gas. Friction reducer (FR) is one of the primary components of this fracturing fluid. It is used to decrease the flowing friction in the pipeline. Flow loop tests in lab and field applications have addressed this issue thoroughly. However, the flow characteristics of friction reducer solution in microfractures are not clear. This study used capillary tubes to represent microchannel, and the flow behavior of FR solution in these microchannels was systematically studied. With FR solution flowing in the microchannels at various velocities, different FR concentration, microchannel size, and microchannel surface wettability impact on the FR
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Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research
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flow behavior was investigated in detail. It is found that the friction reducer is a slight shear thinning fluid with properties that can be expressed by a power-law equation. Its residual resistance factor to water was also specified, which is closely related with the fluid flowback. Finally, the experimental results were compared with the data in a flow loop experiment. Its flow behavior resistance was considered found to be increased in microchannel rather than decreased to be different from that in the centimeter sized tubings. 1. INTRODUCTION Tight formations, such as gas shale with extremely low matrix permeabilities can produce at economic rates primarily owes to the inborn fissures and hydraulic fractures, which the later one is created during hydraulic stimulation. Hydraulic fracturing in shale gas reservoir can provide much more complex fracture networks by connecting and/or generating the inborn and introduced microfractures, and then expose a larger drainage area than that with a pair of main fracture in conventional reservoir. The fracture network exposes more matrix as the number of the micro-sized fractures increases.1-3 Among the various hydraulic stimulation methods, slickwater fracturing has been proved to be an effective method to increase the recovery of shale gas reservoirs.4-6 By adding a very small amount of chemical additives to the fluid (
