Rheological investigation of a random copolymer of polyacrylamide and polyacryloyl hydrazide (PAM‐ran‐PAH) for oil recovery applications

In this article, we synthesize and investigate the rheological properties of a random copolymer PAM‐ ran ‐PAH of polyacrylamide (PAM) and polyacryloyl hydrazide (PAH) and compare with the results of PAM at different temperature (30 and 80 °C) and salinity (0 and 1.0 wt %). At 30 °C, both PAM and PAM‐ ran ‐PAH exhibited non‐Newtonian rheology with both shear thinning and shear thickening responses. The rheological properties such as viscosity and moduli ( G ′ and G ″) of PAM significantly deformed at elevated temperature (80 °C) and salinity (1.0 wt %), resulting no recovery in viscosity and moduli. On the other hand, the effect of temperature and salinity was found to be least on PAM‐ ran ‐PAH and showed better stability with the possibility of recovering its original rheological properties. The performance of PAM and PAM‐ ran ‐PAH was also characterized by enhanced oil recovery tests. The use of PAM‐ ran ‐PAH for polymer flooding, due to its stable rheology, resulted in an increase in the oil recovery than PAM. In general, the rheological behavior of PAM‐ ran ‐PAH as a chemical agent proved to be thermally stable than PAM, which clearly supports its use for saline environment and high temperature applications.