(179f) Effects of Hydrocarbons on Viscosity of Water Containing Rheology-Modifiers

Tertiary crude oil recovery techniques are employed to increase production of crude oils extracted from an oil field. Using tertiary crude oil recovery techniques, 30-60% of the reservoir's original crude oil can be extracted compared with 20-40 % using primary and secondary recovery. Crude oil's viscosity is reduced to increase its production in the tertiary oil recovery method by heating oils with steam to extract easily the crude oil, burning a portion of the crude oil to heat the surrounding oil in the in-situ burning, using occasionally detergents, and flooding carbon dioxide.

On the contrary to the conventional tertiary crude oil recovery techniques, a new tertiary oil recovery technique will be developed to displace crude oil with injected water containing rheology modifiers without reducing viscosity of a body of crude olis. Upon contacting the rheology modifier in injected water with crude oil, viscosity of the injected water containing rheology modifier will increase at the water-crude oli interface. Roles of various rheology modifiers in water will be investigated for the viscosity increase at the interface of injected water containing rheology modifier and crude oils with our viscometer and its novel viscosity equations.

Selected viscosity modifiers include alcohols such as methanol, ethanol, isopropanol, and n-butanol, ketones such as acetone and methyl isobutyl ketone, tetrahydrofuran, 2-methyl tetrahydrofuran, sodium dodecyl sulfate, and addition compounds such as urea, thiourea, hydroquinone, cyclodextrins, picric acid, and sodium chloride.