Rheological Behavior of Xanthan Gum as a Polymeric Profile Modifier for Polymer Flooding Purposes

Today water-based xanthan gum structure-forming agent is used for drilling and exploitation of reservoirs with horizontal wells, high-quality separation of drilling fluids from cement slurry during well cementing, as well as fluids for drilling wells (killing fluid, blocking fluid, behind-the-packer fluid and so on), as well as jelly-like liquids for polymer water flooding and formation hydraulic fracturing. Xanthan gum is an ecologically clean product, due to which the scope of application of this product is continuously expanding. Xanthan gum is produced microbiologically in the bioreactor, which in turn is a complex multi-stage process that includes maintaining optimal conditions and the environment of bacterial activity, cultivation from the necessary bacterial strain and the culture media. Various products of secondary raw materials can be used as a nutrient medium for the production of xanthan gum, for example, low-grade wood, which reduces the cost of production, solves the problem of waste utilization and expands the possibilities of using the resulting biopolymer. Given the high variety of xanthan biopolymers available on the market, significant advantages over other products are the speed of manufacturing the product at a lower cost, the accessibility of raw materials and the production of a convenient logistics chain. All this is proposed by our research team on the basis of the use of solutions based on a biopolymer obtained using an experimental strain producing 4 times more xanthan than analogues to reach the above goals and objectives. Our research evaluates the rheological characteristics of solutions with the resulting products at various temperatures, and also considers the applied rheological models in the range of practical values of shear rates.