Study on a new water-inhibiting and oil-increasing proppant for bottom-water-drive reservoirs

Due to the high water content ratios after hydraulic fracturing stimulation treatments in the bottom-water-drive reservoirs, a surface modified quartz sand proppant with the performance of water inhibition and oil enhancement was developed. This surface modified proppant (YS03 proppant) indicates the following advantages, such as, no-heating in the preparation process, simple operation, and short reaction time, making it suitable for “On-the-fly” treatment, which will greatly reduce the impact of storage and transportation. The evaluation experiments show that the contact angle is up to 151° with little change even at 80 °C, which indicates YS03 proppant has strong hydrophobicity. The crush rates of the quartz sand at 52 MPa (69 MPa) are reduced from 3.69% (10.30%) to 1.81% (5.11%), making it applicable to hydraulic fracturing. The core flowing experiments demonstrate that the NFRR is 5.51, and the fracture conductivity experiments show that YS03 proppant pack can effectively inhibit the flow of the aqueous phase and promote the flow of the oil phase. In addition, the fines adsorption experiments manifest that the YS03 proppant pack has an excellent self-cleaning property, which can maintain flow channels for the hydrocarbon production for a long time after the hydraulic fracturing treatment.