Effect of Nanoclay along with Other Effective Parameters on Gelation Time of Hydro Polymer Gels

In this work, a hydrogel was prepared by crosslinking of aqueous solutions of sulfonated polyacrylamide/chromium triacetate for the purpose of water shut-off treatment in oil fields. In order to screen the factors that affect the gelation time and investigate their interactions, a 32 run fractional factorial design was used in experimentation with eight factors (pH, CaCl2 concentration, crosslinker/copolymer ratio, NaCl concentration, copolymer concentration and presence or absence of sodium lactate, nanoclay, and thiouria) and one response (gelation time). Furthermore, the analysis of variance (ANOVA) was implemented as a significant tool to evaluate the quality of the quadratic model. The ANOVA results of the developed model showed it was significant with a 99% confidence limit. Among the eight factors, presence of sodium lactate, copolymer concentration, presence of nanoclay, presence of thiouria, and crosslinker/copolymer ratio had, in order, the main effects, and the interactions between sodium lactate and crosslinker/copolymer ratio and between pH and crosslinker/copolymer ratio were highly significant.