Polyacrylamide(PAM) is a widely used polymer in oil industry since it can act to increase the viscosity of the solution. However, currently most of the PAM used are limited to linear ones. This is because people are still not able to control the structure of the resulting polymer very well.Here, we use the mechanism of atomic transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) to synthesize comb-shape polyacrylamide, where the acrylamide monomer grafts from macro-initiator which has an alternating bromine group for initiating acrylamide polymerization. In order to get better water solubility before attaching acrylamide, the backbone is co-polymerized with pentafluorophenyl methacrylate. After aminolysis in a post polymerization modification, this part is supposed to provide some hydrophilic function group and make it possible for the following �graft from� reaction.  Then, effect of polymer structure on the viscosity improvement is tested by measuring the viscosity of lab-made linear PAM and comb-shape PAM with similar molecular weight. The branched PAM is believed to get equal or better viscosity improvement compared to its linear analogue. Also, it's worthwhile to see how the comb-shape PAM performs compared to the commercial viscosity improver. This fundamental research paves the way for the application of different structure PAM in Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR).

Synthesis and evaluation of linear and comb-shape polyacrylamide as viscosity improver for oil recovery

247th National Meeting (2014)

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