Chemical Degradation of HPAM by Oxidization in Produced Water: Experimental Study

作者：Weiguo Luo, Suxin Xu, Farshid Torabi · 年份：2013 · DOI：10.2118/163751-ms · 被引用次数：20 · 研究领域：Enhanced Oil Recovery Techniques、Membrane Separation Technologies、Reservoir Engineering and Simulation Methods

Abstract Hydrolyzed polyacrylamide (HPAM) degradation is a critical technical and environmental concern in oilfields, where HPAM is extensively used in drilling or chemical enhanced oil recovery process, especially polymer flooding. However, how to treat the residual HPAM in produced water has become an urgent issue. In this work, the HPAM chemical degradation characteristics were investigated through series of laboratory experiments. The oxidative, ionic and thermal degradation of HPAM were studied, and the feasibility of HPAM degradation by oxidization was examined. The results will help the oil industry to find a practical and optimal HPAM treatment method. In the experiments, the oxidization effects of photo-catalysis and strong oxidants at different temperatures, as well as the presence of typical ions with different concentrations on HPAM degradation process were studied. In addition to this, the related reaction mechanism during the degradation process was investigated. The experimental results show that the natural sunlight has little effect to excite the HPAM degradation, while the light generated by a high-pressure mercury lamp with a wave length λ < 385 nm can stimulate the catalytic function of TiO2, which consequently accelerates the HPAM degradation reaction. Also, the strong oxidant such as Na2S2O8 and H2O2 can greatly improve the HPAM degradation, especially at higher temperature with a degradation degree η less than 0.15. In the HPAM-Na2S2O8 system, fr...