The illustrated pump-based injection scheme (left) is commonly used to enable tailored viscosities for each well, and to avoid viscosity loss by injection of high concentration polymer solutions downstream the water choke valve. Some of the main drawbacks of this setup are that the maintenance and energy demands are usually higher than for a valve-based scheme (right). By having a low shear Polymer Flooding Valve based injection scheme, the one-pump-per-well injection scheme is replaced with a larger central pumping station plus one low shear Polymer Flooding Valve per well to control the polymer injection rate. Compared to the one-pump-per-well scheme, the central pumping station and low shear Polymer Flooding Valves will result in the same low shear performance but with significantly lower maintenance costs and an overall lower energy consumption.
For this specific installation, the valve was operated with a pressure drop ranging from 4 to 35 bar. Experiences and feedback from the installation are very positive, and some highlights are:
- The valve is easy to connect and operate, with full flexibility within the designed operating envelope
- The low shear performance is according to the design criteria
Note that the low shear performance of the Polymer Flooding Valve is a design factor independent of capacity. Typhonix Low Shear Polymer Flooding Valves can therefore be tailored to meet the field’s specific needs, both in terms of low polymer degradation, flow rate and pressure drop.
