Preparation of two-component polyacrylamide inverse emulsion drag reducer for slick water and investigation of its rheological and drag reduction properties

In this paper, a slick water drag reducer with excellent drag reduction and a simple molecular structure, called QIE-0, was prepared by inverse emulsion copolymerization. QIE-0 is a copolymer emulsion of acrylamide and 2-acrylamide-2-methylpropyl sulfonic acid with an average molecular weight of 5.17 × 106 Da. QIE-0 has excellent thermal stability, and the temperature resistance can reach 220 °C. Prolonged static storage (180 days) did not change the viscosity-increasing properties, and the viscosity of 0.1% QIE-0 solution is 5.2 mPa s. QIE-0 presents a three-dimensional network structure in an aqueous solution and the structure changes with concentration. QIE-0 has special fluidity and a linear viscoelastic domain from 0.1% to 100%. QIE-0 solution has no thixotropy and is a stable structure. The drag reduction rate of ultra-low concentration (0.01%) slick water systems reaches 82.10%. The drag reduction rates of different systems are fitted by the established exponential function model and the power function model, and the correlation coefficient between the predicted values and the experimental values is greater than 0.999. QIE-0 meets the needs of slick water fracturing fluid applications and has huge potential applications in unconventional oil and gas production.