Unlocking Produced Water Potential for Sustainable Hydraulic Fracturing: Understanding Fluid and Additive Interactions
Authors: Geri Mohammed Ba , Alsuqri Omar 
Published: April 2024

Over the last few years, high viscosity friction reducers (HVFRs) have been successfully used in the oil and gas industry across all premier shale plays in North America, including Permian, Bakken, and Eagle Ford. To understand the potential of pressure friction reduction efficiency of HVFRs using produced water-based, a laboratory investigation was conducted using several samples of produced water from the fracturing operation in the Bakken, Woodford, and Permian basins. This study addresses the challenges of using HVFRs in fracturing operations by investigating the compatibility between HVFRs and other chemical additives, such as biocides, breakers, and iron, and reducing potential formation damage. Also, to achieve the designed pump rate with reasonable pump surface pressure, pressure loss friction is increased, and the horsepower of the equipment is reduced.

Investigating the compatibility of HVFRs fracturing fluid with breakers and biocides on high TDS-produced water plays the key factor that can extend the brine water tolerance of HVFRs and enhance the fracture fluid performance in terms of reducing pump horsepower and increase the friction reduction pressure loss. HVFRs viscosity profile, breakability, compatibility with biocide, and friction reduction pressure loss experiments utilizing produced water from the Bakken and Permian basins at a temperature range of 70-2800F. The performance of HVFRs was compared with (Acrylamido-2- methylpropane sulfonic aci (AMPS) HVFRs and traditional FRs. Different biocides, including Glut Quat and oxidizers, were used to examine the compatibility of the HVFRs. The breakability of the three selected fracturing fluids, HVFRs, traditional FR, and AMPs HVFRs, has investigated ammonium persulfate (APS) breaker under different test times, temperatures, and breaker dosage conditions.

The friction reduction measurements and viscosity profile of HVFRs reveal that peracetic acid (PAA) with polyacrylamidebased HVFRs systems improve the ORP level by 134% and 14% in the freshwater and the Permian-produced water, respectively. The numerical results show that the AMPS HVFR systems with PAA increased viscosity by 37% compared to anionic HVFR and traditional FR. Although sodium hypochlorite (bleach) is most commonly used in some basins as a biocide, the HVFR performance dropped significantly at a low dosage of bleach.

The presence of 1.0 ppt of the selected studied breakers (ASP) showed no significant effect on HVFRs performance. The HVFRs were easily degradable under high TDS and temperatures without the breakers. Screening criteria for selecting the type of HVFR plays a crucial role in iron environment conditions.

This work establishes the feasibility of reliably replacing freshwater with recycled produced brine for hydraulic fracturing through custom-engineered HFVR formulations. Operational adoption of these fluids can reduce environmental impacts, decrease water management costs, and improve the sustainability of unconventional oil and gas development.