Investigating the Effect of Different Salinity Levels of Water in Waterflooding on Drag Reducing Agent Extracted from Natural Waste Materials

• Main Author: Bin Zakaria, Harith Faezsal
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: IRC 2014
• Subjects: TC Hydraulic engineering. Ocean engineering
• Online Access: http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/14592/1/FYP%202-DISSERTATION_HARITH%20FAEZSAL%20ZAKARIA.pdf; http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/14592/

The use of drag reducing agent (DRA) as an additive in oil and gas industry has become famous and widely used nowadays. The usage of DRA is not limited in pipeline only, it has been also used in waterflooding or water injection system. However, information on the usage and reliability of natural polymers as DRA in water injection system are still limited. In this paper, polymer was extracted from natural waste materials (coconut residue) for the purpose of producing the DRA. Other than that, the effectiveness of the DRA was tested in different properties of water since the parameters of water used in waterflooding may vary one from another. In this study, the focus parameter will be the water salinity and a test was done to determine the effectiveness of the DRA in different levels of salinity. To accomplish these objectives, an amount of coconut residue was processed for the extraction of carboxymethylcellulose (CMC). Then, it was used as DRA and tested by using fluid friction apparatus in different levels of salinity with 0 ppt (tap water), 10 ppt, 20 ppt, 30 ppt, 40 ppt and 50 ppt concentration. The concentration of DRA used is 400 ppm for each sample. From the test, it was found that the DRA extracted from natural waste materials (coconut residue) can reduce drag. Nonetheless, as the salinity of water increase, the percentage of drag reduction decrease. Or in other word, drag increase percentage is increased. Therefore it is concluded that, the CMC extracted from natural waste materials (coconut residue) can act as DRA to reduce drag in water injection system. However, by increasing the salinity of the water used, the capability of DRA to reduce drag will decrease. This research will make the abundance of natural waste material to turn into a resource to be utilised as DRA and hence can transform the waste to profit in terms of operation cost. This research also will contribute to the study of flow assurance as well as can determine whether the different salinity of water will affect the effectiveness of DRA.