Development of scientists from Tomsk will help to extract “heavy” oil

​One of the most important problems in the oil and gas sector of Russia is the extraction of scavenger oil. It makes up about 60-70% of the total reserve of resources in the country.

The chemists of the Innovation and technical center SFTI TGU have worked out new reagents which significantly increase the coefficient of heavy oil extraction.

One of the ways of its extraction is the technology of layer watering by polymer solutions, surface-active materials or emulsion liquid, the scientific supervisor of the project, chief research officer, V. Yanovsky said. Polymers and surface-active materials are not very useful in this way by a whole number of factors, for example, they have high bio- and thermal resistance, require additional treatment by expensive special reagents.

Polymers and surface-active materials cause problems at further oil separation from layer water. Finally, these reagents are quite expensive. Emulsions, on the contrary, are very close by their structure to hydrocarbons, which is a very useful feature of them.