Effect of Fluid Rheology on Sand Production: Comprehensive study

This study presents a new analytical model for power-law fluids and investigates its application in examining sand production. A xanthan gum (XG) based polymer solution is injected into the artificially made sandstone, with characteristics similar to the Kazakhstani oil field, to evaluate the effect of polymer flooding on sand production. The examined rheology of the polymer solution fitted with a power-law model was used as input for the new analytical model. We observed sand production during the injection of the polymer solution, but no sanding was noticed during the injection of brine at a similar flow rate. The derived analytical model was used to compare the cumulative mass of produced particles with the results of laboratory experiments. The model fits well with the experimental data, except for the initial stage, where approximately half of the sand volume was produced at the first pore volume of XG solution injection.