Research status and progress of functional fracturing proppant used in oil and gas development (I)

Oil proppant is also called oil fracturing proppant.

When oil and gas are exploited in deep wells, after fracturing treatment of high closing pressure and low permeability deposits, the oil and gas bearing strata will split, and oil and gas will flow out of the channel formed by the fractures. At this time, fluid needs to be injected into the rock base to exceed the pressure of the formation fracture strength, so that the surrounding rock layer around the wellbore will produce fractures, forming a channel with high flow capacity. In order to keep the fractures formed after fracturing open, oil and gas products can pass through smoothly. With the high pressure solution, the oil proppant is used to enter the formation and fill in the rock fractures, which plays a role in supporting the fractures not to be closed due to stress release, thus maintaining high conductivity, making oil and gas unblocked and increasing production.

1. Water reducing proppant

Water reducing proppant is a general term for proppant for drainage, oil storage and gas storage. The surface of traditional proppant is modified to control the type, property and content of its surface functional groups, so as to obtain a functional proppant with water reducing function. This proppant has the functions of reducing water and increasing oil and gas production.

2. Expandable proppant

Expandable proppant is a general term for proppant that can expand under external conditions, such as pressure, temperature and pH value. Thermosetting shape memory polymer was used as raw material to prepare proppant with expansion function. This kind of proppant can improve reservoir permeability and porosity to achieve the purpose of increasing production and efficiency.

3. Tracer proppant

Tracer proppant is a functional proppant used to monitor, detect and locate reservoirs, fractures and their states. It can work in complex working conditions and far field. Researchers often use coating, coating, doping and composite methods to prepare tracer proppant. The tracer proppant can be divided into chemical tracer proppant and physical tracer proppant.

4. Backflow control proppant

Backflow control proppant is a proppant that can control the backflow of proppant itself and prevent equipment wear and corrosion. The principle of its function is to use rapid polymerization and curing to prevent backflow of proppant, which can simplify the treatment process and reduce costs. Backflow control proppant can be generally manufactured by composite resin, surface modification, magnetic and potential regulation and other methods.