Synergistic Study between Gum Arabic and Carboxymethyl Cellulose: Application in Polymer Flooding

The oil industry is experiencing a paradigm shift where the use of green chemicals is being encouraged in order to address environmental issues associated with the use of synthetic chemicals and also because of the fact that most of these synthetic polymers like hydrolysed polyacrylamide used to improve mobility ratio in Polymer flooding are imported chemicals. Thus, the need to source for other polymers that are viable and equally environmentally friendly.

Gum Arabic used in this analysis was obtained from the northern part of Nigeria. Different concentrations of Gum Arabic were analysed to study their rheology as well as the effect of salinity on them in order to determine their degree of resistance for this is a criterion in polymer flooding. However, the stability of Gum Arabic was further enhanced by the addition of Carboxymethyl Cellulose (CMC) at varying concentration to determine its effect on the solution viscosity. Based on the results, the effect of blending resulted in synergistic viscosity however, the stability of the solution with respect to the effect of salinity was affected.