LAUSR

Abstract Polymer microspheres offer fascinating prospects on oil recovery due to their distinctive swelling performance and deformation ability. However, because of the influence of emulsifiers in the product, the present polymer microspheres synthesized by traditional polymerization methods can greatly reduce the effect of oil displacement. “Water-in-water” (W/W) emulsion, an emulsion by using water phase as solvent and water-soluble macromolecular polymer as dispersant, can avoid contamination of oil phase and emulsifier. Composed of nano-SiO2 and polymer, the organic-inorganic microsphere possessed remarkably dispersity, elasticity, swelling performance, deformation ability and migration ability. To verify the validity of the products, many tests were carried out, such as Field emission scanning electron microscope (SEM), FT-IR spectra, thermogravimetry (TGA), Energy-dispersive Xray Spectroscopy (EDS), contact Angle and dynamic light scattering (DLS), etc. Dependent on excellent swelling performance and elasticity, the microsphere promised its great potentials for plugging. Particularly, based on its feature of size changing with temperature, it must have great attraction and application value in temperature-controlled size of organic-inorganic microsphere.