Int. J. Oil, Gas and Coal Technology, Vol. 6, No. 3, 2013 245 Copyright © 2013 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. Mobility control and enhanced oil recovery using partially hydrolysed polyacrylamide (PHPA) Abhijit Samanta and Keka Ojha Enhanced Oil Recovery Laboratory, Department of Petroleum Engineering, Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad-826 004, India E-mail: abhijit.ism08@gmail.com E-mail: keka_ojha@yahoo.com Ashis Sarkar Department of Applied Chemistry Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad-826 004, India E-mail: a_sarkar_99@yahoo.com Ajay Mandal* Enhanced Oil Recovery Laboratory, Department of Petroleum Engineering, Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad-826 004, India E-mail: mandal_ajay@hotmail.com *Corresponding author Abstract: Polymers are often used as mobility controller for enhanced oil recovery. The present paper deals with the application of partially hydrolysed polyacrylamide (PHPA) polymer in enhanced oil recovery after the conventional water flooding. Experimental results show that viscosity of PHPA solution increases significantly on addition of small quantity of polymer, which in turn decreases the mobility ratio. The effect of frontal-advance velocity on the total relative mobility at different concentration of polymer has been discussed. A series of flooding experiments were performed in a flooding apparatus to observe the efficiency of polymer flooding at different concentration of PHPA. The crude oil is collected from Ahmedabad oil-field, India (total acid number of 0.038 mg KOH/g, gravity of 38.86° API and viscosity of 119 mPa.s at 30°C). The additional oil recoveries vary 16% to 20% of original oil in place (OOIP) depending on the polymer concentration. [Received: August 30, 2011; Accepted: December 25, 2011] Keywords: partially hydrolysed polyacrylamide; PHPA; viscosity; mobility; enhanced oil recovery; flooding. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Samanta, A., Ojha, K., Sarkar, A. and Mandal, A. (2013) ‘Mobility control and enhanced oil recovery using partially hydrolysed polyacrylamide (PHPA)’, Int. J. Oil, Gas and Coal Technology, Vol. 6, No. 3, pp.245–258.