Chinese Journal of Chemical Engineering 43 (2022) 324–334

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Chinese Journal of Chemical Engineering

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Full Length Article

Conformance control by a microgel in a multi-layered heterogeneous

reservoir during CO2 enhanced oil recovery process
Zheyu Liu 1,2, Jian Zhang 3, Xianjie Li 3, Chunming Xu 1, Xin Chen 2, Bo Zhang 1, Guang Zhao 4, Han Zhang 2,
Yiqiang Li 2,⇑
1
State Key Laboratory of Heavy Oil Processing, China University of Petroleum (Beijing), Beijing 102249, China
2
College of Petroleum Engineering, China University of Petroleum (Beijing), Beijing 102249, China
3
China National Offshore Oil Corporation Research Institute, CNOOC, Beijing 100028, China
4
School of Petroleum Engineering, China University of Petroleum (East China), Qingdao, Shandong 266580, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Injecting CO2 into the underground for oil displacement and shortage is an important technique for car-
Received 9 November 2021 bon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS). One of the main problems during the CO2 injection is the
Received in revised form 3 January 2022 channeling plugging. Finding an effective method for the gas channeling plugging is a critical issue in
Accepted 4 January 2022
the CO2 EOR process. In this work, an acid-resistance microgel named dispersed particle gel (DPG) was
Available online 31 January 2022
characterized and its stability was tested in the CO2 environment. The microgel size selection strategies
for the homogeneous and heterogeneous reservoirs were respectively investigated using the single core
Keywords:
flooding and three parallel core flooding experiments. Moreover, the comparison of microgel alternate
Carbon dioxide
Microgels
CO2 (MAC) injection and water alternate CO2 (WAC) injection in the dual core flooding experiments were
Enhanced oil recovery presented for the investigation of the role of microgel on the conformance control in CO2 flooding process.
Conformance control The results have shown that the microgel featured with ANH and CAN groups can keep its morphology
Porous media after aging 7 days in the CO2 environment. Where, the small microgel with unobstructed migration and
large microgel with good plugging efficiency for the high permeability zone were respectively featured
with the higher recovery factor in homogeneous and heterogeneous conditions, which indicate they
are preferred used for the oil displacement and conformance control. Compared to WAC injection,
MAC injection had a higher incremental recovery factor of 12.4%. It suggests the acid-resistance microgel
would be a good candidate for the conformance control during CO2 flooding process.
Ó 2022 The Chemical Industry and Engineering Society of China, and Chemical Industry Press Co., Ltd. All
rights reserved.

1. Introduction companies [10]. The Weyburn–Midale oilfield in southeastern Sas-

The carbon dioxide (CO2) emission caused by human activities
is more than 25Gt every year, which is a major reason for the glo-
bal temperature rise [1]. Carbon capture, utilization and storage
(CCUS) is an effective method to control the CO2 concentration in
the atmosphere [2,3]. The captured CO2 can be used in the chemi-
cal synthesis industry [4], refrigeration [5] and oil production pro-
cess [6]. Among them, injecting CO2 into the underground
reservoirs for oil production has presented a large potential. The
excellent characteristics of mass transfer between CO2 and crude
oil make CO2 significantly enhance oil recovery via oil swelling, vis-
cosity reduction, interfacial intension (IFT) reduction or miscibility,
and solution gas drive [7–9]. CO2 enhanced oil recovery (EOR)
technology has been successfully applied in worldwide oil
katchewan had restored 27 million tons of anthropogenic CO2 in
the ground from 2000 to 2016, which made oil production increase
from 8000 bbl
d 1（1 bbl = 0.159 m3）in 2000 to approximately
26,000 bbl
d 1 by 2014 [11]. The pilot of CO2 flooding in H-59 block
of Jilin Oilfield yielded 14.5  104 tons of crude oil after 16  104
tons of CO2 injection, which achieved an incremental oil recovery
factor of 10% original oil in place (OOIP) [12].
CO2 is feathered with the common characteristics of other gas.
Its viscosity and density are both less than the liquid, which will
inevitably cause viscous fingering and gravity override during the
CO2 flooding [13,14]. Al-Wahaibi et al. (2010) [15] conducted CO2
displacement experiments in a visible beadpack model and found
the gas channeling reduces mass transfer between the oil and
CO2, which affect the swept volume. Zhao et al. (2011) [16] also

⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: yiqiangli@cup.edu.cn (Y. Li).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cjche.2022.01.011
1004-9541/Ó 2022 The Chemical Industry and Engineering Society of China, and Chemical Industry Press Co., Ltd. All rights reserved.
 Z. Liu et al. / Chinese Journal of Chemical Engineering 43 (2022) 324–334
found CO2 channeling reduce the sweep efficiency in the immisci-
ble flooding using MRI technique. Ren et al. (2015) [17] believed
the gas channeling leads the miscibility instability and near-
miscible flooding is preferred for the CO2-EOR. How to control
the gas channeling is a critical issue for the successful CO2-EOR
projects application.
Water alternated gas (WAG), CO2 foam and hydrogel treatment
are commonly used methods to control profile in CO2 flooding. The
existence of the free gas phase and various gas and water satura-
tion in the reservoir during WAG injection will cause the fluid
redistribution and increase the swept volume [18,19]. Christensen
et al. [20] reviewed the WAG field experience in about 60 projects
and concluded a 5 to 10% incremental oil recovery could be
achieved with WAG injection. Ghahfarokhi et al. [21] reported
compared to the less-heterogeneous zone of SACROC, WAG injec-
tion was more favorable to enlarge swept volume in more-
heterogeneous zones. Song et al. [22] investigated the effect of
reservoir properties and operation parameters on WAG perfor-
mance using the numerical simulation and found WAG injection
has a higher incremental recovery factor of 17.64% as compared
to water flooding. Shakiba et al. [23] and Yu et al. [24] respectively
tested active carbonated water alternating gas (ACWAG) injection
in the cores with permeability of 10 mD and 0.1 mD (1
mD = 10 3 lm2). They found more than 30% original oil in place
(OOIP) were recovered for both tight cores and low permeability
cores using ACWAG injection. These reports indicate WAG seems
to be an effective technique in CO2 EOR process. However, the loss
of injectivity, wax deposits and corrosion caused by the dissolved
CO2 in water are common issues in WAG projects, which may
restrict the application of WAG injection. Using CO2 soluble surfac-
tants to generate CO2 foam for conformance control is also pro-
posed and investigated by a series of study. Ren et al. [25] found
CO2 foam generated by adding two kinds of 2-ethyl-1-hexanol into
aqueous phase will increase recovery factor from CO2 flooding of
24% to CO2 foam flooding of 71% and 92%. The surfactant parti-
tioned more to the CO2 phase leads a higher recovery factor. Zhang
et al. [26] used two nonionic surfactants mixing to increase the sol-
ubility of single surfactant in CO2, which can significantly improve
CO2 foam performance for its blockage. Norris et al. [27] reported
the application of CO2 foam in the Salt Creek Field can successfully
decrease the gas–liquid ratio and expand swept volume during CO2
flooding process. Using foam as the conformance control agent in
the pilot also faced huge challenges. Unlike the foam generation
by co-injection of surfactant and CO2 in the laboratory, gas and sur-
factant are usually separately injected in the pilots in the form of
multi-slug to avoid too high injection pressures. The complicated
operation process makes the application of CO2 foam more diffi-
cult. Meanwhile, gas and surfactant are unable to meet in the
severely heterogeneous reservoir, which may fail to generate foam
in this condition [28].
Hydrogel treatment has overcome the above problems in WAG
injection and CO2 foam flooding, which make it become a promis-
ing, cost-efficient method for conformance control in the heteroge-
neous reservoirs [29,30]. Hydrogel treatment can be classified into
the in-situ gelation and preformed particle gel (PPG). In-situ gel
treatment refers injecting monomer, crosslink agents and some
additives into the reservoir to block preferential flow channels
after these components reaction and gelation [31]. Unfortunately,
the chromatographic separation of the components and shear
degradation during its injection make the in-situ gels only work
near the wellbore [32]. PPG is an already crosslinked gel which is
made in the dry powder form. The range of PPG sizes are usually
from several microns to several millimeters. Moreover, it can swell
up to dozens of times in the brine. The good performance in shear
resistance and simple injection operation makes PPG has widely
used in the water treatment in the high water cut oilfield
325
[33,34]. To expand this idea, microsphere with smaller sizes are
proposed to implement conformance control in the low permeabil-
ity reservoir.
Acid-resistance and the particle size selection are two key
issues for conformance control by microgel in the reservoir of
multi-layered heterogeneous CO2 flooding. Conventional polymer
in the gel is easy to degrade under the acidic conditions which cre-
ated by CO2 dissolved in the formation water. But this problem has
been solved by the constant efforts. Abbasy et al. (2008) [35]tested
the long-term stability and plugging efficiency of polyacrylamide
synthetic polymer, chloroprene rubber and nitrile rubber under
the H2S and CO2 environments and concluded all three materials
can bear H2S and CO2. Albidrez et al. [36] reported a crystallized
superabsorbent copolymer with the sizes range from 1 to 14 mm
featured the ability of CO2-resistance and bacteria-resistance,
which was used in the Permian Basin for the treatment of high-
permeability channeling during CO2 injections. Zhou et al. [37]
added dimethyldiallylammonium chloride as the acid resistance
monomer and synthesized an acid-resistant preformed particle
gel. It exhibited the good plugging performance in the supercritical
CO2 flooding. Since the plugging efficiency of these granular micro-
gels is determined by the relationship between microgel sizes and
pore throats sizes, how to choose the microgel sizes based on pore
throat sizes in high-permeability channeling has been attracting
lots of attentions. Yao et al. [38] found it can balance the microgel
plugging and migration ability when the ratio of particle size to
pore throat diameter is 1.35–1.55 using sand pack model. Chen
et al. [39] believed microgel had the best plugging efficiency when
matching factor ranged from 1 to 1.3 via the resistance factor and
plugging rate test. However, Dai et al. [40] optimized the matching
factor from 0.21 to 0.29 based on the injection pressure and the
plugging rate by considering the in-depth migration and plugging
ability of microgel. Yang et al. [41] proposed the plugging efficiency
was affected by the elasticity of microgel and our previous work
also presented the microgel had four migration and plugging pat-
terns in the porous medium, which were separately corresponded
to different matching factors [39,42]. These works clarified the
microgel size selection method for conformance control to a cer-
tain extent, but there are several flowing channelings in the
multi-layered heterogeneous reservoir. It is still unclear how to
use microgel to simultaneously realize plugging in the large size
channeling and displacing in the porous medium in this condition.
The objective of this work is to investigate microgel size selec-
tion strategy for conformance control in the multilayer heteroge-
neous reservoir and test plugging efficiency by an acid-resistance
microgel during the CO2 flooding process. Single core and three
cores in parallel flooding experiments are performed to optimize
the ratios of microgel sizes to pore throat sizes via the ultimate
oil displacement efficiency. The plugging efficiency of an acid-
resistance microgel was tested by the comparison of the injection
pressure of water alternate supercritical CO2 (WAC) injection and
microgel alternate supercritical CO2 (MAC) injection in the cylin-
drical core. The proposed size selection strategy is also verified
by the oil displacement efficiency of dual core flooding experiment.
This work will provide an insight for the microgel size selection for
conformance control in CO2 utilization for EOR.
2. Experimental
2.1. Materials
The brine used in this work was a simulated formation water
with the salinity of 9374 mg.L 1. The brine composition was listed
in Table 1. The mineral oil dyed with Sudan red had a viscosity of
45 mPa.s and a density of 0.835 g
cm 3 at 30 °C. Two microgels
were used in this work are both organic polymer gel. One was
326 Z. Liu et al. / Chinese Journal of Chemical Engineering 43 (2022) 324–334
Table 1
Composition of the simulated formation water
Iron K++Na+ Mg2+
. 1
Concentration/mg L 2549 49
synthesized with various sizes in our previous work [42] and the
second named dispersed particle gel (DPG) was provided by Pro-
fessor Dai’s group at China University of Petroleum (East China)
[43]. CO2 with a purity of 99% were purchased from an agent in
Beijing. To highlight differences of each scheme, a hydrolyzed poly-
acrylamide polymer commercialized used in Dagang oilfield with
an average molecular weight of 20 million Da and a degree of
hydrolysis of 25% was added into the microgel solution as the
mobility control agent in core flooding experiments for microgel
sizes selection. The compound system had a viscosity of 32 mPa.s
which was measured using a Brookfield DV II viscometer at the
shear rate of 6 s 1 with the polymer concentration of 1500 mg.L 1.
Synthesized resin cores with a size of 4.5 cm  4.5 cm  30 cm and
cylindrical outcrop cores with a diameter of 2.5 cm and length of
30 cm were respectively used in the microgel size selection exper-
iments and CO2 channeling plugging experiments. Three synthe-
sized cores with the gas permeability of 2800 mD, 780 mD and
360 mD were in parallel to mimic a heterogeneous reservoir. Since
the high permeability zone and middle permeability zone were the
treatment targets for conformance control, the pore sizes distribu-
tion of the synthesized cores with the permeability of 2800mD and
780mD were tested by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) as
shown in Fig. 1. The outcrop with a permeability of 15 mD was
served for microgel plugging efficiency test and then paralleled
with another outcrop with a permeability of 5 mD as the dual core
model for microgel conformance control study in the CO2 flooding
process with the optimized microgel size.
2.2. Characteristic of microgel that used for conformance control in
CO2 flooding
The synthesis method and characteristic of microgel used in the
size optimization experiments were introduced in our previous
work [42]. Herein, the characteristic of an acid-resistance microgel
named DPG which was provide by China University of Petroleum
(East China) [43] was investigated with Fourier transform infrared
spectroscopy (FTIR), element analysis and scanning electron micro-
scope (SEM). The characteristic functional groups of DPG in the
400–4000 cm 1 range was analyzed by a TENSORIIFTIR spectrom-
eter (Bruker, Germany). Vario EL Cube elemental analyzer (Ele-
mentar, Germany) and Rapid OXY Cube elemental analyzer
(Elementar, Germany) were respectively used for C, N, H and O
quantitative detection. To obtain the DPG morphology, the samples
Fig. 1. Pore diameter distribution of two permeability cores with NMR test.
Ca2+ Cl 1
HCO3 CO23 Total
76 3864 465 61 7064
were frozen at 80 °C for 6 h, tableted and sputtered with gold and
then observed with a SEM measurement (Hitachi S-4800, Hitachi,
Japan).
2.3. Microgel acid-resistance test
The DPG morphology and size distribution before and after
aging in the CO2 environment were compared to show its acid-
resistance ability. The CO2 was added into a sealed accumulator
which contained DPG solution and then increased its internal pres-
sure to the reservoir pressure of 22 MPa with a booster pump. The
microgel was taken out for the morphology observation with ESEM
and size distribution test with dynamic light scattering (DLS) appa-
ratus (Malvern Instruments Ltd., UK) after aging 7 days.
2.4. One-dimensional core flooding and parallel core flooding
experiments for microgel size optimization
One-dimensional cores flooding experiments were used to
investigate the displacement efficiency of compound systems with
different sizes microgel in the homogeneous reservoir. The two
sizes of microgel with the median diameter of 18.7 lm and
42.8 lm mixed with the polymer were respectively injected into
the cores with the permeability of 2800 mD after water flooding,
which corresponded the ratio of microgel diameter to pore throat
diameter of 0.45 and 1.03. The polymer flooding was conducted
after water flooding as a comparison. The detailed experimental
procedure is as follow: vacuum the core and saturated with brine
for the porosity measurement, then used oil displacing aqueous
phase to create the irreducible water saturation. The prepared core
samples were flooded with water until water cut reached 90%, then
separately conduct three kinds of tertiary oil recovery methods,
including 0.8 PV(pore volume, PV, unit is cm3) of two compound
systems of polymer microgels and 0.8 PV of polymer solution, fol-
lowed by post water flooding until the water cut reached 98%. An
accumulator with stir was used for the microgel injection. The
pressure, oil production, and water production were continuously
recorded.
The permeability of three cores were 2800 mD, 780 mD and 360
mD in the parallel core flooding experiments. The ratios of two
microgel diameters to pore throat diameter of 780 mD core are
0.97 and 2.22. Unlike the scheme in one-dimensional cores flood-
ing experiments, 0.3 PV of microgel of two sizes without mixing
with polymer were separately injected after water flood to the
water cut reached 90%, then followed by 0.4 PV of polymer flood-
ing. The experiments were shut off until the water cut reached 98%
during the post water flooding. The concentration of polymer and
microgel were both 1500 mg.L 1 in both one-dimensional core
flooding and parallel core flooding experiments. The schematic dia-
gram of two experiments were shown in Fig. 2.
2.5. Dual core flooding experiments for conformance control by DPG in
CO2 flooding
The acid-resistance DPG with a concentration of 1500 mg.L 1
used for conformance control was characterized in Section 2.2.
The dual cores with permeability of 15 mD and 5 mD were satu-
rated oil by following the procedure in Section 2.4. The back pres-
sure of dual core model was set at 22 MPa and CO2 was immiscible
 Z. Liu et al. / Chinese Journal of Chemical Engineering 43 (2022) 324–334 327

Fig. 2. Schematic diagram of single core and parallel core flooding experiments for microgel size optimization.

with crude oil at this condition. CO2 was continuously injecting till
CO2 breakthrough. Then, three rounds of WAC and MAC were pre-
formed and compared. Each alternate round contains 0.5 PV of
aqueous phase (water or microgel solution) and 1 PV of CO2. The
oil production and injection pressure of WAC and MAC were
recorded in the whole displacing process. The schematic diagram
of dual core flooding experiments was shown in Fig. 3.
3. Results and Discussion
These elements were identical to the interpreted elements of peaks
in FTIR spectra.
The microscopic morphology of DPG in the original status was
observed with SEM and its size distribution was counted via the
image identification using the IMAGE J package. The DPGs were
tightly packed together and presented regular spherical in Fig. 4
(c). The range of the DPG sizes were from several hundred nanome-
ters to several micrometers, and its median diameter was around
1 lm. Since DPGs had shaded each other, the statistics of DPG sizes
in Fig. 4(d) can only be used for reference.

3.1. Characteristic of microgel (DPG) used in CO2 flooding 3.2. Morphology and size distribution of DPG in the acid environment

FTIR data of microgel was acquired via the 32 scans accumula-
tion and presented in Fig. 4(a). The broad peak at about 3322 cm 1
indicated the presence of ANH groups in secondary or tertiary car-
bon amine. The peak around 1477 cm 1 revealed the presence of
CAN in the microgel. The peak around 1642 cm 1 is ascribed to
the presence of C@O in bond. The peaks at 3009 cm 1 and
2913 cm 1 were related to the stretching vibration peak of unsat-
urated and saturated CAH bond. The peaks at 1609 cm 1 and
1212 cm 1 were caused by the stretching vibration of C@C bond
and CAC bond in DPG sample. Fig. 4(b) showed C and O were the
most abundant element in the microgel, followed by N and H.
The microgel morphologies obtained from SEM in Fig. 5(a) and
(b) presented the effect of acid environment on its stability. With
the aging in the CO2 environment, the uniform and dispersed par-
ticles began coalescence because of their large surface energy. Dis-
solved metallic ion in brine will also neutralize the negative charge
of DPG surface, which lead to the coalescence [44]. The median
diameter of DPG increased from the initial size of 1 lm to 4 lm
after 7 days aging was found from DLS measurement in the Fig. 5
(c). The size increasing was caused by the particle coalescence
rather than the degradation. The aggregated DPG would contribute
to the plugging in gas channel, which resulted in an effective con-

Fig. 3. Schematic diagram of dual core flooding experiments for the comparison of WAC and MAC during CO2 flooding process.
328 Z. Liu et al. / Chinese Journal of Chemical Engineering 43 (2022) 324–334

Fig. 4. (a) FTIR spectra, (b) element analysis and (c) SEM of an acid-resistance microgel (DPG) (d) Size distribution analysis of DPG via image identification.

Fig. 5. Effect of acid environment on DPG morphology and size distribution. (a) DPG morphology before aging in the acid environment; (b) DPG morphology after aging in the
acid environment; (c) Size distributions of DPG before and after aging in the acid environment using DLS measurement.
 Z. Liu et al. / Chinese Journal of Chemical Engineering 43 (2022) 324–334
Fig. 6. Oil recovery curves and incremental oil recovery factor of polymer with and without microgel.
Fig. 7. Injection pressure of polymer with and without microgel during the whole
flooding process.
formance control. The intensive particle size distribution and reg-
ular microscopic morphologies of DPGs demonstrated they were
feathered with the good acid-resistance ability.
3.3. Oil displacement efficiency of two microgel sizes in the one-
dimensional core flooding experiments
Oil displacement efficiency of polymer with and without micro-
gel were compared to optimize microgel size selection strategy in
the relative homogeneous reservoir. The ratio of microgel size to
pore throats sizes of 0.45 and 1.03 were respectively corresponded
the unobstructed migration and slight blockage. The oil recovery
curves of polymer flooding and polymer with two size microgel
combination flooding in Fig. 6 presented the system of polymer
with small size microgel featured with the best performance in
Fig. 8. Images of three effluent during tertiary oil recovery process with different displacing solutions. (a) Polymer with large size microgel flooding; (b) Polymer with small
size microgel flooding; (c) Polymer flooding.
329
the tertiary oil recovery stage. Oil recovery factors of three exper-
iments during water flooding stage were similar, which indicated
the good repeatability of these experiments. With the chemical
solution injection, the oil recovery factors rapidly increased and
gradually became smoothly. The incremental recovery factor of
polymer with small microgel was 30.5%, followed by the polymer
with large microgel of 27.2% and polymer of 25.5%.
The injection pressure curves of three systems in Fig. 7 may
help to explain the reason. All of them firstly increased to the peak
and then decreased to the flat because of the reduction of flow
resistance of oil and water during the water flooding stage. The dif-
ference appeared as the chemical solution injection. For the poly-
mer flooding, the injection pressure sharply increased to the
plateau due to the high viscosity of displacing phase and then
gently decreased because the oil bank was pushed out. For the
solution combined by polymer and microgel injection, their pres-
sures did not reduce after reaching the peak . The pressure of the
small microgel nearly kept constant during the injection process,
which indicated the small microgel could migrate and remedy
the pressure dropping caused by the oil saturation reduction. How-
ever, the pressure of the large microgel continuously increased
during its injection. And the pressure descent rate of large microgel
was much less than those of other two experiments during the
post-water flooding. Both meant the sever blockage was occurred.
Compare to the small microgel with the size ratio of 0.45, the large
microgel with the size ratio of 1.03 may be unable to enter into
small pores of the core, which failed to achieve a more incremental
recovery factor.
The effluents in Fig. 8 vividly show the oil production processes
of three experiments. Compare to the polymer flooding, the com-
330 Z. Liu et al. / Chinese Journal of Chemical Engineering 43 (2022) 324–334

pound system of polymer with microgel can rapidly reduce the

Total
25.2

17.1

55.6
10.1

30.4
water cut. The minimum water cut of microgel with size ratio of

3.2
0.45 was lower than others and featured a longer duration. It could
be concluded the migration of microgel was more important than
its blockage in the homogeneous condition. The small microgel
would be recommended for the oil displacement.

360 mD 3.4. Microgel size selection strategy through three parallel core
14.9 flooding experiments

21.1

22.4
37.3
1.1
0.2
Three different permeability cores were paralleled for core
flooding experiments to investigate microgel size selection strat-
egy in the multi-layered heterogeneous reservoir. From the Sec-
tion 3.2, it can be known the large microgel will plug the high
permeability core and the small microgel can easily migrate in it.
780 mD

The two microgels with the size ratio of 0.97 and 2.22 to the mid-
17.5

22.8
15.8

44.4
61.9

dle core respectively indicated the slight plugging and serious

5.8

blockage for their transportation. Herein, two microgel size selec-

tion strategies which respectively realized the plugging of the high
permeability flow channel or the migration in middle permeability
flow channel were compared and discussed in this section.
Large microgel

Two parallel cores flooding experiment results shown in Table 2

and Fig. 9 indicated the large microgel had a higher ultimate oil
2800 mD

recovery, which was favored for the conformance control in the

24.6
64.7
40.1

12.0
9.1

3.5

multi-layered heterogeneous reservoir. Table 2 demonstrated the

small microgel could effectively enhance oil recovery of high per-
meability core, while the large microgel benefited the oil recovery
in the middle and low permeability cores. The greatest contribu-
tion to the incremental oil recovery was the microgel injection
stage in the experiment using the large microgel, which was the
Total

polymer flooding stage in the experiment using the small microgel.

27.8

11.5

23.8
51.6
7.4

4.9

Fig. 9 shows the oil recovery of the core flooding experiment using
small microgel was firstly higher than that using large microgel.
The oil recovery incremental rate of small microgel obviously
increased with the microgel injection, which lead a higher recovery
factor at the later stage of microgel injection. With the polymer
injection, the oil recovery factor of two experiments firstly became
360 mD

similar and then the large microgel featured a higher recovery fac-
13.9

24.7
10.8
3.1
1.7
6.0

tor at the later stage of polymer flooding and the whole post-water
flooding stage.
The injection pressure of the large microgel in Fig. 10 was obvi-
ously higher than that of the small microgel during the microgel
and polymer injection stage, which was similar with the core
flooding experiments in the homogeneous condition. They both
Summary of three parallel core flooding results of small and large microgels

780 mD

decreased in the post water flooding stage and the injection

21.2

21.3

37.6
58.8
10.1

pressure of the small microgel presented a higher descending rate.

6.2

The fractional flow curves of two microgels in Fig. 11 vividly

showed the liquid produced proportion of each layer during the
whole flood process, which may help to understand the reason
for the better performance of large microgel in the three parallel
Small microgel

core flooding experiments. Since the permeability ratio of high per-

meability core to low permeability core was nearly 8, most injected
2800 mD

fluid went along the high permeability core, which caused the low
46.2

22.3
68.5
15.0
6.2

1.1

swept efficiency in other two cores. The fractional flow of middle

and low permeability core increased with the microgel injection.
This increment was more pronounced for the large microgel, espe-
Oil recovery of water flooding/%

cially in the low permeability core. The reason was compared to

Incremental oil recovery/%

the small microgel, the larger resistance caused by the blockage

Ultmiate oil recovery/%

of large microgel in the high permeability core forced the fluid

Post water flooding

flowing into the other cores. The inversion point appeared as the
Microgel injection
Polymer flooding

polymer flooding initiation. The fractional flow of each layer kept

constant in the experiment of small microgel injection. But for
the experiment of the large microgel injection, the fractional flow
Stage

of high permeability core and low permeability core in the polymer

Total
Table 2

flooding stage went against that of microgel injection stage, which

meant flow resistance of each core was redistributed. The occur-
 Z. Liu et al. / Chinese Journal of Chemical Engineering 43 (2022) 324–334 331

Fig. 9. Oil recovery curves and incremental oil recovery factor of two sizes microgels followed by polymer flooding.

Fig. 10. Injection pressure curves of two sizes microgels followed by polymer flooding.

rence of the fractional flow inversion was a little later in the middle
permeability core, which was the reason for the largest ultimate
incremental recovery factor achieved by the large microgel in the
middle permeability core.
From the above results, it could be known the blockage of high
permeability zone was the first step to realize conformance control
in the heterogeneous reservoir. The large microgel was preferred
though it may cause the serious plugging in the middle and low
permeability zones. In this work, the unexpected fractional flow
changing during the polymer flooding process after large microgel
injection may be caused by the too high flow resistance of microgel
in the middle and low permeability zones. However, it was control-
lable via manipulating the injection amount of microgel.
3.5. Comparison of conformance control by water alternate CO2 (WAC)
injection and microgel alternate CO2 (MAC) injection in dual core
flooding experiments
The acid-resistance microgel with the median size of 3.5 lm
was used for the conformance control in the dual core flooding
experiments. The high permeability core of 15 mD featured with
the median pore size of 4.2 lm, which indicated it can be blocked
by the selected microgel based on the above study. Water alternate
CO2 (WAC) injection and microgel alternate CO2 (MAC) injection
were respectively conducted and compared after CO2 flooding.
Fig. 12 presented the oil recovery curves and incremental oil recov-
ery of the each cycle injection. It showed MAC injection had the
ultimate oil recovery of 76.7%, which was higher than that of
WAC of 64.3%. Since the oil recovery after CO2 flooding was similar
in two experiments, the difference of the ultimate oil recovery fac-
tors between WAC and MAC could reflect the role of microgel in
conformance control. The incremental oil production was both
from the first round of aqueous and CO2 alternated injection for
WAC and MAC. The higher recovery factor of MAC was also attrib-
uted to the first round cycle injection because the microgel could
occupy the gas channel and forced the aqueous phase into the
unwept volume. There was not much remaining oil in the areas
which aqueous and gas could reach for the followed cycle injection.
The injection pressure of MAC and WAC in Fig. 13 reflected the
plugging efficiency of two methods. Due to the impact of gas com-
pressibility, the pressure curves increased during the aqueous
phase injection stage and decreased once CO2 was injected. Com-
pare to the increment of flow resistance during WAC injection
caused by the Jamin effect and three phases flowing effect, the flow
resistance increased by the microgel blockage was much larger
during MAC injection. The increased pressure of MAC injection
was 1.5–3 times higher than that of WAC injection, which was ben-
eficial for the swept volume enlargement. The high injection pres-
332 Z. Liu et al. / Chinese Journal of Chemical Engineering 43 (2022) 324–334

Fig. 11. Fractional flow curves of three cores during the whole displacement process (a) small microgel; (b) large microgel.

Fig. 12. Oil recovery curves and incremental oil recovery factor of WAC and MAC in each injection stage.
 Z. Liu et al. / Chinese Journal of Chemical Engineering 43 (2022) 324–334
Fig. 13. Comparison of injection pressure curves of MAC and WAC with the back pressure of 22 MPa.
sure also verified the good performance of acid-resistance microgel
for conformance control.
4. Conclusions
An acid-resistance microgel used for conformance control in
CO2 EOR stage was characterized and evaluated via a serious of sta-
tic tests. The microgel size selection strategy for the efficient block-
age in the multi-layered heterogeneous reservoir was investigated
using the single core and three parallel core flooding experiments.
The following conclusions were drawn:
(1) A microgel named DPG featured with —NH and C—N groups
with the average size of 3.5 lm can keep intensive particle
size distribution and regular microscopic morphology after
aging 7 days in the CO2 environment, which indicated it
had a good acid-resistance ability.
(2) A small microgel with the ratio of microgel diameter to pore
throat diameter of 0.45 presented a higher oil recovery fac-
tor in the single core flooding experiment, which indicated
the unobstructed migration was important for the applica-
tion of microgel toward the effective displacement in the
homogeneous condition.
(3) The large microgel injection featured an incremental recov-
ery factor of 30.4%, which was 6.6% higher than that of small
microgel injection in the three parallel core flooding experi-
ments. It indicated the blockage of high permeability chan-
nel was preferential for the microgel selection in the
multi-layered heterogeneous reservoir.
(4) The pressure of microgel alternate CO2 (MAC) injection was
1.5–3 times higher than that of water alternate CO2 (WAC)
injection and the incremental oil recovery of MAC was
12.4% higher than that of WAC. The oil production in MAC
and WAC were both from the first cycle of aqueous and
gas injection. These results indicated the acid-resistance
microgel would be a good candidate for the conformance
control during CO2 flooding process.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared
to influence the work reported in this paper.
333
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foun-
dation of China (52004305), the Postdoctoral Research Foundation
of China (2021M693497) and the Science Foundation of China
University of Petroleum, Beijing (2462020XKBH006). We thank
Prof. Caili Dai from the China University of Petroleum (East China)
for providing the DPG sample
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