Design of CO Thickeners and Role of Aromatic Rings in Enhanced Oil Recovery Using Molecular Dynamics.

Oligomers of PDMS (M1), polyFast (M2), modified PVEE (M3 and M4), and two new molecules with cyclic cores (M5 and M6) were studied to understand their ability to thicken the sc-CO at 377 K and 55 MPa, without any cosolvent. It was observed that PDMS and polyFast behaved in the known ways. PDMS does not improve the viscosity of the system without a cosolvent and PolyFast enhances the viscosity by a large margin.