Work to date has involved analysis of flow performance, curing time and pot life of two epoxy resin systems. The curing time is the period of time during which the epoxy resins are fully hardened by the reaction of a curing agent. The pot life is the length of time that a catalyzed resin system retains a viscosity low enough to be used in processing.

Observations from fall tests in pipe with simulated well formation fluids have found that experiments of epoxy injected in angled pipe flows to the bottom of the pipe much faster than experiments performed in vertical pipe with the same epoxy formulation. In fact angled pipe speeds are more than double of those performed in vertical pipe. The reasoning is that the water in the pipe needs to rise as the epoxy falls. The two motions oppose each other and therefore hinder the settling greatly.

A second observation is that the annulus does not seem to cause significant change in the settling velocity. It was expected that a smaller annulus would result in a slower settling velocity since the cross sectional area is smaller and there would be more friction from the pipe walls which is proportional to the hydraulic perimeter of the annulus.

A possible reason why the annulus did not affect the settling velocity could also be the placement method. Injecting epoxy in small volume rates might show otherwise. A negative observation with regard to epoxy injection into an angled pipe is the amount of epoxy that adhered to the pipe’s wall while falling. The amount of epoxy adhering to the wall is significant, giving an indication that real life applications for deep walls, if not properly calculated, the entire volume of epoxy could adhere to the pipe before reaching the bottom. More analysis of this is needed since it was observed that most of the adhered epoxy was at the top and the adhesion decreases as the epoxy falls. There are two possible explanations to why the adhesion decreases as the epoxy moves down. The first reason is that when the valve is open all the epoxy is released at once and therefore the concentration of epoxy at the top has more chance of bumping into the pipe walls and adhering to it. As the epoxy spreads downward the concentration decreases and therefore has a less chance of bumping. As a result, a recommendation to minimize adhesion of epoxy is to inject it at low volume rates so the concentration of epoxy relative to seawater in the pipe would be small. In addition, if the epoxy could be injected into the pipe while having an initial downward velocity that would also minimize adhesion. Other options exist, for example, developing a means to allow injection at lower depths within the well bore.

Large scale tests will take place at the Boots & Coots facility in a 3000’ test well owned and operated by Boots & Coots.