Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 Journal of Petroleum Exploration and Production Technology https://doi.org/10.1007/s13202-019-00749-8 ORIGINAL PAPER - PRODUCTION ENGINEERING Experimental evaluation of partially hydrolyzed polyacrylamide and silica nanoparticles solutions for enhanced oil recovery Upendra Singh Yadav 1  · Harinandan Kumar 1  · Vishnu Roy 2  · Saurabh Juyal 2  · Anurag Tripathi 1  · Anveshika Shanker 1 Received: 7 June 2019 / Accepted: 31 July 2019 © The Author(s) 2019 Abstract The establishment of oil production well is becoming a challenge with the increasing demand for energy. The fulfllment of energy need requires large production of oil and gas as it is a primary source of energy. EOR is also important because of the enhancement in oil production from thirty percent to more than ffty percent. The chemical EOR is one of the techniques for the increment in oil production. Chemical fooding using water-soluble polymers like partially hydrolyzed polyacrylamide (PHPA) has been industrially used as an EOR technique. The paper deals with the efect of nano-silica particles on viscos- ity as well as the shear rate of the polymer solution. The change in viscosity, as well as shear rate, was studied at variable concentrations of the nano particles in the diferent concentrations of PHPA solution. Mutual correlation between viscos- ity and other parameters like temperature, shear rate, salinity, nanoparticle concentration, and polymer concentration was established using the statistical method. Keywords Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) · Nano-silica particles · Viscosity · Shear rate · Optimization Introduction Oil and gas are the primary requirement for energy resources throughout the world and it will continue in the future. The continuous production of the hydrocarbon leads to the deple- tion of oil and gas resources. Only thirty percent production of hydrocarbon is possible with the conventional method. Therefore, it is highly required to recover the remaining unreachable hydrocarbon from fulfilling the increasing demand. The recovery of those unreachable hydrocarbons is possible by using enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods. Out of several EOR techniques, polymer fooding is the most common and efective chemical EOR methods for poten- tial recovery of oil and gas (Wever et al. 2011; Sheng et al. 2015). This technique overcomes several disadvantages of the conventional waterfooding technique like the fnger- ing and bypassing of water through oil. One of the critical parameters in the fooding process is the mobility ratio, which is a measure of the combined efect of permeability and fuid viscosities on fractional fow. If the mobility ratio is one or slightly less than one, there will be an efcient and piston-like displacement of oil (Vossoughi 2000). Partially hydrolyzed polyacrylamide (PHPA) is the most frequently used polymer in this respect, owing to its low cost, viscosi- fying nature, and well-known physiochemical properties (Urbissinova et al. 2010). The molecule of this polymer is a fexible chain which remains in coil-like structure in the absence of a shearing efect. The application of PHPA is limited due to high temperature and salinity (Uddin et al. 2002). In such conditions of elevated temperature, the amide groups of the chain undergo extensive hydrolysis into a car- boxylic acid and these hydrolyzed products get precipitated when they come in contact with cations commonly present in reservoir brines (Thorne et al. 2010; Taylor and Nasr- El-Din 1998). PHPA acts as shear-thinning polymer, i.e., it undergoes shear degradation and reduces viscosity at high shear rates. This is because, at high shear rates, the chains of the polymer get cutof (Song et al. 2006). An increasing number of research studies using nanopar- ticles are being carried out every year. This special attention is due to the unusual properties that these particles display because of their extremely small size and large surface area. * Harinandan Kumar harinandankumar88@gmail.com 1 Department of Petroleum and Earth Sciences, University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, Bidholi, Via Prem Nagar, Dehradun, Uttarakhand 248007, India 2 Department of Petroleum and Energy Studies, DIT University, Dehradun 248009, India