Polymer flooding and its combinations with other chemical injection methods in enhanced oil recovery

In this paper, the current advances in chemical injection method of polymer flooding are reviewed. The ultimate goal of polymer flooding for EOR process is to improve tertiary oil recovery by increasing the overall oil driving efficiency as a result of the improvements in injected fluid’s viscosity and mobility ratio. However, it was found that there were some limitations of polymer flooding. Hence, this paper will be reviewing studies on combinations of polymer flooding with other chemical methods by various researchers. Polymer flooding and its combinations with other flooding methods discussed in this paper are: polymer, alkaline polymer (AP), micellar polymer (MP), nanoparticles injection with polymers (NP) and alkaline surfactant polymer (ASP). The working principle, resistance, effectiveness and field application of each flooding method are also reviewed and compared.