The study on permeability reduction performance of a hyperbranched polymer in high permeability porous medium

This paper was focused on the permeability reduction performance of a hyperbranched polymer in high permeability porous medium. Water solubility, rheological property, viscoelasticity, and filtration experiments were adopted for investigating the solubility and injectivity of the hyperbranched polymer. Atomic force microscope (AFM), scanning electron microscope (SEM), and shear experiments were conducted for studying the microscopic structure, adsorption behavior, and shear resistance, respectively. Besides, resistance factor (RF), residual resistance factor (RRF), and displacement experiments were adopted for investigating the permeability reduction performance and enhanced oil recovery (EOR) ability of the hyperbranched polymer. It was found that the hyperbranched polymer exhibited acceptable water solubility, remarkable shear resistance, perfect permeability reduction and EOR ability. It was also found that the hyperbranched polymer owned higher apparent viscosity, viscosity retention rate, and adsorption retention due to the special network structure of polymer molecular chain.