Institut Teknologi Bandung

The 11th Hokkaido Indonesian Student Assoiation Scientific (HISAS 11) is a conference held by the Hokkaido's Indonesian Students Association (PPI Hokkaido) which aim to publish Indonesia's students research. It has expectation that these research can solve the existing problems in the world, especially in Indonesia. In this year, HISAS 11th held on Saturday (08/02/14) at Hokkaido University, Japan.

To meet the needs of its oil, Indonesia is forced to import oil from neighboring countries, such as Singapore and Malaysia. According to the Minister of Industry, MS Hidayat, Indonesia's oil imports are very terrible and disturbing national Trade Balance. Currently, Indonesia's oil imports has reached 14 billion US dollars. Inflation is one of domino effect from Indonesia's inability to meet the demand for oil. One solution to reduce imports is maximizing domestic oil production with oil wells which has existed.

Oil resources in Indonesia is not as much as before. Many old wells has very low oil contents, and more impurities. Reporting from the General Director of Oil and Gas, Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, Indonesia has 13,824 old wells. "Many oil reservoirs in Indonesia, which is old, and the oil content is much less than the water content," said Aeny. It will cause the efficiency of oil extraction from the earth becomes increasingly declining due to the amount of oil that is obtained is too little, while the costs are high. This fact underlied Aeny and Zihnil to conduct research on polymers that can be used for the Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR).

Polymer used here are polyacrylamide cross-linked hexamethylene tetra amine (HMTA) and hydroquinone (HQ). These polymers will close the pores in the rock, so that water can't be brought up to the surface together with oil. Before using polymers technique as EOR, the oil contents produced by the old well is only around 10-20%, but oil production will increase when EOR technique used with these polymers.

Polyacrylamide is liquid, so it must be added by HMTA and HQ with certain composition to become gel and can close the rock's pores perfectly. "The duration of transition process from liquid to gel has to be set depend to the depth of oil wells to be retrieved," said Aeny. Duration to create the gel phase can be expressed through a mathematical model that has Aeny and Zihnil made. "The mathematical model predicted the duration of gel formation was also became our focus on the presentation at Hokkaido University," Aeny added.

Efforts to maximize the old wells to increase oil production in the country is a wise step, considering Indonesia's dependence on oil is still very high. Research is one of three obligation of college (Tri Dharma Perguruan Tinggi), conducted by students to solve many problems exist in accordance with their fields. "We hope this study can be applied in national oil company, so it can be useful for Indonesia and realize Indonesia's development to oil," Aeny said.