STUDY OF INTRINSIC VISCOSITY AND FLOW ACTIVATION ENERGY OF SOME POLYMERS IN DIFFERENT SOLVENTS

    The intrinsic viscosity and flow activation energy have been studied for several polymers which is used in some industrial applications, such as polyisobutylene of types Oppanol B150, 200,and 250 with different molecular weights of 2.5, 4.1 and 5.9 million g/mole, respectively, which dissolve in crude and gas oil.In addition three types of additives brought from Al-Dura refinery;olefin copolymer (OCP), {viscoples-4-677, viscoplex-215496, and Lubrizol R 7077} which dissolved in crude oil, and the polymers which is soluble in water such as polyacrylamide with high molecular weight and xanthan gum with molecular weight 3.7 million g/mole were also studied.Measurements of intrinsic viscosity and Huggins constant have been carried for all types of polymers listed above, at a temperature of 40 and 100°C using a capillary viscometer. It was found that the intrinsic viscosity of polyisobutylene decreases as the temperature of crude and gas oil increase, and there was a kind of olefin copolymer (Viscoplex-4-677) behaves the same of polyisobutylene where it can be used as drag reduction agent. measurements of Mark-Houwink parameters (k and a) were done for polyisobutylene in crude oil equal to 0.0442 and 0.558 respectively and for gas oil  equal to 0.0415 and 0.6 respectively at a temperature of 40°C and they are not determined in previous literatures .It was noted that there are two types of polymers used as drag reduction agent, neutral polymers such as polyisobutylene, and other polyelectrolytes such as Xanthan Gum. It was found that polyelectrolyte has different behavior from the neutral polymers,the reduced viscosity increases as concentration of polymer decreases.It has been found that the addition of polyisobutylene to crude and gas oil decrease the flow activation energy of this fluids.