Characterization of Swelling Packer EPDM Elastomers

Since many years different elastomer types have been applied in a number of oilfield completion solutions. With regard to harsh environment elastomers have to withstand someti mes, it is crucial to design long lasting products resilient to high temperature and aggressive fluids able to deal with high differential pressures at the same time. Swelling packers appear to be a real challenge to design. A frequent question may be what type of rubber to use in swelling systems to compensate high temperature and high pressure conditions. This paper is based on methodology and characterization of vulcanized ethylene-propylene-diene mon omer (EPDM) samples submitted to swelling in a glass dish and OFITE dynamic linear swell meter. Several different recipes for rubber vulcanization were used and tested trying to combine and mix different concentrations of each component. The swelling of rubber samples was tested in oil acquired from one of the Croatian oil fields at room temperature and 90°C. A significant difference in swelling intensity and speed was observed when comparing these two conditions. Swelling properties were carefully scaled imposing conclusions given at the end of the paper.