Design of novel temperature-resistant and salt-tolerant acrylamide-based copolymers by aqueous dispersion polymerization

Development of polymer-based flooding technology to improve oil recovery efficiency, water dispersion copolymerization of acrylamide, cationic monomer methacryloxyethyltrimethyl ammonium chloride (METAC), and anionic monomer acrylic acid (AA) were carried out in aqueous ammonium sulfate solution with polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) as the stabilizer. The copolymers were characterized by (1)H-NMR, FT-IR, TG, and SEM to confirm that they were prepared successfully and exhibited excellent salt-resistant property. Moreover, the effect of the aqueous solution of ammonium sulfate (AS) concentration, stabilizer concentration, and initiator concentration on the viscosity and size were systematically investigated. To further improve the thermal endurance properties of copolymer, hydrophobic monomers with different alkyl chain lengths were added to the above system. The acrylamide-based quadripolymer possessed prominent thermal and salt endurance properties by utilizing the advantages of zwitterionic structure and hydrophobic monomer. With the temperature rising, the viscosity retention could reach 70.2% in the water and 63.8% in the saline. This work had expected to provide a new strategy to design polymers with excellent salinity tolerance and thermal-resistance performances.