Abstract
The wide use of polyacrylamide (PAM) in enhanced oil recovery generates a large amount of polymer-bearing wastewater featuring high viscosity and difficult viscosity reduction, making the treatment of wastewater increasingly difficult. In this paper, the experimental study on reducing the viscosity of wastewater containing polyacrylamide by using the plasma generated by dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) and the synergistic effect of catalyst γ-Al2O3 is carried out. The law of plasma reducing the viscosity of wastewater containing polyacrylamide is studied under the different conditions of amounts of γ-Al2O3 catalyst, discharge voltages, and initial concentrations of polyacrylamide-containing wastewater. The mechanism of viscosity reduction of polyacrylamide is studied through environmental scanning electron microscope (ESEM), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometer, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The results show that the catalytic viscosity reduction is the best when the discharge voltage is 18 kV and the discharge time is 15 min. With the increase in the input of the γ-Al2O3 catalyst, the viscosity of the PAM solution decreases gradually. When the amount of γ-Al2O3 is 375 mg, the shear rate changes from 0.5 1/sec to 28 1/sec, and the viscosity of the solution containing polyacrylamide changes from 434.5 mPa·s to 40.2 mPa·s. The viscosity reduction rate of the PAM solution is 90.7%. After the catalytic viscosity reduction, the functional groups of polyacrylamide do not change much. The elemental composition of the catalyst has not changed, which is still Al, C, and O.
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This work was supported by the Key Laboratory of the Ministry of Education on improving oil and gas recovery under Grant NEPU-EOR-2021–01.
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. XW conceived the overall framework; AJ performed material preparation; MZ contributed to the conception of the study; CF performed literature reviews. HH, ZH, KL, and LW helped perform the analysis with constructive discussions. All authors drafted the article and contributed to the writing.
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Wang, X., Jin, A., Zhu, M. et al. Study on low-temperature plasma γ-Al2O3 catalytic viscosity reduction of polyacrylamide solution. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 36098–36111 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-24735-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-24735-6