Tracer Chemicals

Tracer chemicals have been utilised in the oil industry for the past three decades to help with oil production optimization, the diagnostics related to fluid recovery, decisions on well spacing and to improve the efficiency of hydraulic fracturing.

Trachem is a specialist in the production of a large range of tracer chemicals used in the specialist field of enhanced oil recovery (EOR). Our product range includes water soluble, oil soluble and gas tracers.

With over 30 years of manufacturing and formulation experience, we are fully equipped to support your demand for tracer chemicals, which are typically available from stock in quantities of 10s to 1000s of kilograms, or on short production lead-times.

Hydraulic Fracturing

Hydraulic fracturing is a well stimulation technique in which rock is fractured by a pressurized liquid. The process involves the high-pressure injection of ‘fracking fluid’ into a wellbore to create cracks in the deep-rock formations through which natural gas, petroleum, and brine will flow more freely.

We can supply a large selection of both water and oil soluble tracers suitable for your hydro frac studies and new tracer chemicals can be developed under CDA if you have any new candidates you would like to test in your fieldwork trials.

Oil Tracers

We have > 25 halo-aromatic oil tracers in our range suitable for hydraulic fracturing (fracking).

Single Well Tracer

Single-well tracers typically esters allow the investigation of the residual oil saturation to water flooding and employs the concept of partitioning tracers. Based on the partition coefficient of the ester to the oil phase and the arrival times of the back-produced chemicals the residual oil saturation can be calculated.

Water Tracers

We have > 30 benzoic acids in our range suitable for inter-well tracer work (IWT) and hydraulic fracturing. The water-soluble tracers are available in different forms, as the free acids (solid particulate), solid sodium salts or as sodium salts in aqueous solutions and our current portfolio provides a wide enough range of tracer candidates when looking for inter-well communication or when the fracture has a large number of stages.

Custom Synthesis and R&D

In addition to our already comprehensive range of tracer chemicals we are also able to custom design new tracers to your specific requirements, our R&D department is looking to add a further 10 water and oil tracers to our current range. Please inquire for samples of the new tracers or feel free to contact us to help you develop your new tracer molecules under CDA.

Manufacturing

Trachem is a leading manufacturing organisation, specializing in the supply of tracer chemicals for the oil industry. Our manufacturing plant has a total volume of 200,000L, with reaction vessels ranging from 50-5000L, and reactions can be undertaken from -78°C to 240°C, and pressure up to 50 bar.

Our production blocks have been carefully designed to allow flexibility across multi-purpose reactor trains. We are targeted on developing robust commercial process, allowing the large-scale manufacture of our tracer chemicals in a safe, efficient, and environmentally responsible manner.

Site audits of our facilities are welcomed, please contact us to arrange your visit.

Quality Control, Certificates of Analysis & MSDS

We are able to produce your required tracer product to very precise specifications, and control, isomeric and inorganic impurities in addition to water content. This means that you can be assured of the exact ‘active’ content of material injected and therefore have total confidence in the resulting calculations generated.

All our tracer chemicals are supplied with a full Certificate of Analysis measured against your required specification, the analytical data, NMR, HPLC, etc is routinely provided with the certificates.

MSDS are available in different languages and are fully compliant with the relevant jurisdictions, CLP, OSHA & GHS.