Realizing the Efficient Dissolution of Drag Reducer upon pH-Induced Demulsification of Inverse Polymer Emulsion

The increasing exploitation of fossil resources needs to shift people’s attention to developing unconventional reservoir resources. Polyacrylamide-based emulsion drag reducers can effectively reduce the turbulence of fracturing fluid and improve oil recovery, but their release effect is poor, which limits their practical application. Here, we constructed a pH-responsive inverse polymer emulsion of poly(acrylamide–2-acrylamido-2-methylpropanesulfonic acid). Interestingly, HOA/Tween 80 exhibits remarkable pH-responsive behavior, which enables the monomer emulsion to change the type of emulsion under pH stimulation. Our results propose that the P(AM-AMPS) polymer emulsion is eluted with the same aqueous phase as the W/O P(AM-AMPS) polymer emulsion, thereby achieving the effect of drag reduction. P(AM-AMPS) can be rapidly released from the inverse polymer emulsion within 70 s upon pH stimulation, the drag reduction rate of which was 60.4%. Obviously, the inverse polymer emulsion prepared by a pH-responsive surfactant not only has good stability but also can achieve rapid release of the polymer upon pH stimulation, which supplies an interesting indication to explain why a balance exists between the stability of the emulsion and release of P(AM-AMPS).