Abstract

In subterranean coal seam gas (CSG) reservoirs, massive amounts of small-sized coal fines are released during the production and development stages, especially during hydraulic fracturing stimulation. These coal fines inevitably cause mechanical pump failure and permeability damage due to aggregation and subsequent pore-throat blockage. This aggregation behavior is thus of key importance in CSG production and needs to be minimized. Consequently, such coal fines dispersions need to be stabilized, which can be achieved by the formulation of improved fracturing fluids. Here, we thus systematically investigated the effectiveness of two additives (ethanol, 0.5 wt % and SDBS, 0.001 and 0.01 wt %) on dispersion stability for a wide range of conditions (pH 6–11; salinity of 0.1–0.6 M NaCl brine). Technically, the coal suspension flowed through a glass bead proppant pack, and fines retention was measured. We found that even trace amounts of sodium dodecyl benzene sulfonate (SDBS) (i.e., 0.001 wt %) drastically improved dispersion stability and reduced fines retention. The retention was further quantified by fractal dimensional analysis, which showed lower values for suspensions containing SDBS. This research advances current CSG applications and thus contributes to improved energy security.

Document Type

Journal Article

Funding Information

Edith Cowan University - Open Access Support Scheme 2020

School

School of Engineering

RAS ID

31557

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Publisher

ACS Publications

Identifier

Faisal Ur Rahman Awan

Orcid : https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2394-0735

Alireza Keshavarz

Orcid : https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8091-961X

Hamed Akhondzadeh

Orcid : https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1056-258X

Sarmad Al-Anssari

Orcid : https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1545-1755

Ahmed Al-Yaseri

Orcid : https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9094-1258

Ataollah Nosrati

Orcid : https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2000-0107

Muhammad Ali

Orcid : https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2446-3072

Stefan Iglauer

Orcid : https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8080-1590

Comments

Awan, F. U. R., Keshavarz, A., Akhondzadeh, H., Al-Anssari, S. F., Al-Yaseri, A. Z., Nosrati, A., ... & Iglauer, S. (2020). Stable Dispersion of Coal Fines During Hydraulic Fracturing Flowback in Coal Seam Gas Reservoirs–An Experimental Study. Energy & Fuels, 34(5), 5566-5577. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.energyfuels.0c00045

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Link to publisher version (DOI)

10.1021/acs.energyfuels.0c00045