New technologies to investigate the behaviour of silica gels in porous media

Increasing oil recovery in the oil industry requires a better understanding of the mechanism of behaviour of silica gel in porous media. Several technologies have been developed for redistributing fluid flows of injected or produced water in this work. These technologies were developed based on a proposed mechanism of the silica gel creation in a porous medium. The technologies presented here have been developed in order to increase oil recovery, and their implementation at various oil field sites has been evaluated. The results indicate that working within the elastic deformation range of silicate gel is preferable when designing an injection well treatment. As a result of the implementation of these technologies in 519 well operations across different oil fields, an additional 797,734 tons of oil were produced, or 1,537 tons more per well.