Direct Gas Thickener
Direct gas thickening technique has been developed to control the gas mobility in the miscible gas injection process for enhanced oil recovery. This technique involves increasing the viscosity of the injected gas by adding chemicals that exhibit good solubility in common gasses, such as CO2 or hydro...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Book Chapter |
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IntechOpen
2019
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/77770 |
| _version_ | 1848763901519331328 |
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| author | Al Hinai, Nasser Mohammed Myers, Matthew Wood, Colin D Saeedi, Ali |
| author2 | Samsuri, Ariffin |
| author_facet | Samsuri, Ariffin Al Hinai, Nasser Mohammed Myers, Matthew Wood, Colin D Saeedi, Ali |
| author_sort | Al Hinai, Nasser Mohammed |
| building | Curtin Institutional Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | Direct gas thickening technique has been developed to control the gas mobility in the miscible gas injection process for enhanced oil recovery. This technique involves increasing the viscosity of the injected gas by adding chemicals that exhibit good solubility in common gasses, such as CO2 or hydrocarbon (HC) solvents. This chapter presents a review of the latest attempts to thicken CO2 and/or hydrocarbon gases using various chemical additives, which can be broadly categorised into polymeric, conventional oligomers, and small-molecule self-interacting compounds. In an ideal situation, chemical compounds must be soluble in the dense CO2 or hydrocarbon solvents and insoluble in both crude oil and brine at reservoir conditions. However, it has been recognised that the use of additives with extraordinary molecular weights for the above purpose would be quite challenging since most of the supercritical fluids are very stable with reduced properties as solvents due to the very low dielectric constant, lack of dipole momentum, and low density. Therefore, one way to attain adequate solubility is to elevate the system pressure and temperature because such conditions give rise to the intermolecular forces between segments or introduce functional groups that undergo self-interacting or intermolecular interactions in the oligomer molecular chains to form a viscosity-enhancing supramolecular network structure in the solution. According to this review, some of the polymers tested to date, such as polydimethylsiloxane, polyfluoroacrylate styrene, and poly(1,1-dihydroperfluorooctyl acrylate), may induce a significant increase of the solvent viscosity at high concentrations. However, the cost and environmental constraints of these materials have made the field application of these thickeners unfeasible. Until now, thickeners composed of small molecules have shown little success to thicken CO2, because CO2 is a weak solvent due to its ionic and polar characteristics. However, these thickeners have resulted in promising outcomes when used in light alkane solvents. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T11:10:49Z |
| format | Book Chapter |
| id | curtin-20.500.11937-77770 |
| institution | Curtin University Malaysia |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T11:10:49Z |
| publishDate | 2019 |
| publisher | IntechOpen |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | curtin-20.500.11937-777702020-12-16T03:00:40Z Direct Gas Thickener Al Hinai, Nasser Mohammed Myers, Matthew Wood, Colin D Saeedi, Ali Samsuri, Ariffin 0914 - Resources Engineering and Extractive Metallurgy Yes Direct gas thickening technique has been developed to control the gas mobility in the miscible gas injection process for enhanced oil recovery. This technique involves increasing the viscosity of the injected gas by adding chemicals that exhibit good solubility in common gasses, such as CO2 or hydrocarbon (HC) solvents. This chapter presents a review of the latest attempts to thicken CO2 and/or hydrocarbon gases using various chemical additives, which can be broadly categorised into polymeric, conventional oligomers, and small-molecule self-interacting compounds. In an ideal situation, chemical compounds must be soluble in the dense CO2 or hydrocarbon solvents and insoluble in both crude oil and brine at reservoir conditions. However, it has been recognised that the use of additives with extraordinary molecular weights for the above purpose would be quite challenging since most of the supercritical fluids are very stable with reduced properties as solvents due to the very low dielectric constant, lack of dipole momentum, and low density. Therefore, one way to attain adequate solubility is to elevate the system pressure and temperature because such conditions give rise to the intermolecular forces between segments or introduce functional groups that undergo self-interacting or intermolecular interactions in the oligomer molecular chains to form a viscosity-enhancing supramolecular network structure in the solution. According to this review, some of the polymers tested to date, such as polydimethylsiloxane, polyfluoroacrylate styrene, and poly(1,1-dihydroperfluorooctyl acrylate), may induce a significant increase of the solvent viscosity at high concentrations. However, the cost and environmental constraints of these materials have made the field application of these thickeners unfeasible. Until now, thickeners composed of small molecules have shown little success to thicken CO2, because CO2 is a weak solvent due to its ionic and polar characteristics. However, these thickeners have resulted in promising outcomes when used in light alkane solvents. 2019 Book Chapter http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/77770 10.5772/intechopen.88083 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 IntechOpen fulltext |
| spellingShingle | 0914 - Resources Engineering and Extractive Metallurgy Yes Al Hinai, Nasser Mohammed Myers, Matthew Wood, Colin D Saeedi, Ali Direct Gas Thickener |
| title | Direct Gas Thickener |
| title_full | Direct Gas Thickener |
| title_fullStr | Direct Gas Thickener |
| title_full_unstemmed | Direct Gas Thickener |
| title_short | Direct Gas Thickener |
| title_sort | direct gas thickener |
| topic | 0914 - Resources Engineering and Extractive Metallurgy Yes |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/77770 |