Water plugging and profile control are becoming increasingly important in water-flooding oilfields. In this study, the experiments were conducted to determine the microscopic mechanisms and effects of water plugging, profile control, and ‘water plugging + profile control’. Initially, the starch graft copolymer and polymer gel used showed only slight changes in viscosity. However, within 12 h, the viscosities exceeded 100,000 mPa·s, which indicated that the two agents had good plugging effects. When the plugging agent was starch graft copolymer, the oil recovery with water plugging was 2% and 0.8% higher than the values for profile control with polymer gel on a heterogeneous core and parallel core, respectively. The recoveries with the ‘water plugging + profile control’ combination for the heterogeneous core and parallel core were 25.9% and 25.5%, respectively, which showed the superior enhanced oil recovery. The mechanism research showed that when the reservoir entered the middle and high water-cut development stages, the residual oil was mainly distributed in the middle- and low-permeability layers near the oil well. Thus, water plugging provided a greater increase in oil recovery. Under the actual demands of the Bohai oilfield, it would be better to adopt a combined water plugging and profile control operation.

Long-term water injection in oil fields has led to problems such as water breakthrough and reduced oil production. It is urgent to reduce water cut and increase oil production through profile control and water plugging measures. Polymer gel is the most widely used profile control and water plugging agent at present. To study its gelation law and profile control and water plugging performance, many researchers have carried out polymer gel gelation viscosity and strength testing experiments, physicochemical properties characterization experiments, and performance evaluation experiments. On this basis, they conducted numerical simulation of polymer gel profile control and water plugging, studied the factors affecting gelation, and achieved a series of results. In situ polyacrylamide gel has been widely studied, but to the best of our knowledge, there is still a lack of systematic review of experimental research methods, mathematical models of polymer gel profile control, and water plugging mechanisms, and factors affecting gel formation. Therefore, this paper introduces the gelation mechanism and experimental methods of polyacrylamide/metal cross-linked gel and polyacrylamide/phenol-aldehyde cross-linked gel for profile control and water plugging in oil fields. Then, the mathematical models of profile control and water plugging mechanism of polymer gel and the main factors affecting the gelation and gel performance were systematically summarized. Additionally, the paper sorts out the difficulties and shortcomings of current research, and makes a prospect, which provides a theoretical basis for future research on polymer gel system for profile control and water plugging.

In this article, we developed a new composite gel for plugging dominant fluid flow channels in offshore oilfields. The composite gel was synthesized by organic and inorganic gel networks interpenetrating into a compact three-dimensional spatial network structure, resulting in a good plugging effect. The performance of the composite gel was evaluated from the aspects of gelling characteristics and gel microstructure, while the plugging effect was evaluated through core experiments. The results showed that the influencing order of each component on gelling was acrylamide > cross-linking agent > urea > initiator > polyaluminum chloride. The initial viscosity of the composite gel was about 5–6 mPa·s, and it had good plugging abilities in different permeability cores. In comparison with inorganic gels (plugging ratio of 77.2%) or organic gels (84.8%), the composite gel system has a plugging ratio of up to 99.5% using a core with water permeability of 4300 mD. Besides, the reservoir applicability of the composite gel was studied, and the results suggested that the composite gel system had good resistance to dilution, mechanical shear, oil corrosion, and aging and could be quickly removed after plugging.

There have been some studies conducted about the single factor viscoelasticity of polymer solution or wettability effect on the micro-flow mechanism of polymer flooding. In this paper, the flow mechanism of polymer solution in dual heterogeneous reservoir considering the wettability and gravity was studied. The influences of wettability and rock particle shape on flow characteristics were studied based on the characteristics of saturation and pressure distribution. Compared with the simulation results of polymer flooding in three different rock particle shapes porous media, the oil displacement efficiency of the circular particle model is the highest at 91.57%, which is 3.34% and 11.48% higher than that in the hexagonal and diamond models, respectively. The influence of wettability was studied by the circular particle model. The oil displacement efficiency under water-wet conditions was higher than that under oil-wet conditions. The displacement process considering gravity was affected by the crossflow caused by gravity and viscous force, and the micro-oil displacement efficiency was 9.87% lower than that of non-gravity. Considering the wettability, vertical crossflow will be formed. The oil displacement efficiency under water-wet conditions was 3.9% higher than in oil-wet conditions. The research results can not only expand and enrich the micro-flow mechanism of viscoelastic polymer solution, but also provide reference and guidance for polymer flooding scheme design.