Abstract
The study resulted in the following conclusions: 1. Concentrated guar gum solutions effectively plug porous media into which they are injected and thus are not suitable for mobliity control in waterflooding. 2. Flushing water in either principal flow direction will partially restore the initial permability of a formation plugged with guar gum. 3. An enzyme breaker solution effectively restores in a formation plugged with gelled guar gum. 4. Adsorption of polyacrylamide onto treated rock surfaces can be significant and will destroy the flood front at some distance away from the injection well. 5. The results established that polymer adsorption and loss in a formation is a function of the surface area in contact with the flooding fluid. The greater the surface area per unit of bulk volume of flooded sand, the greater the polymer loss. 6. Shaly sands adsorb more polyacrylamide per unit of surface than do clean sands. This is probably due to their platelet edge charges. Thus, a fine grained dirty sand will retain more polymer than a clean sand having similar grain size. 7. The example calculation indicates that synthetic polyacrylamide losses in field applications tend to become prohibitive, particularly where the formation has a high surface area per unit volume.