As consequence of pressure drop in oil reservoirs, production of oil will be difficult and EOR methods are used to improve recovery. In many countries Polyacrylamide is used for polymer flooding in EOR processes, but the problem is that Polyacrylamide is expensive also Acrylamide needs to be handled using best laboratory practices (such as having safe systems of work and wearing appropriate gloves, lab coat etc.) to avoid poisonous exposure since it is a neurotoxin.

In this paper, it is intended to investigate the effect of PVA (Poly Vinyl Acetate) on rheological properties (such as viscosity) of crude oil, water, and their mixture and see if it is possible to use this polymer in order to enhance oil recovery. Our objective is to determine the minimum amount of polymer to increase the viscosity of water and decrease the viscosity of crude oil simultaneously. Since even a small change of polymer amount requires extra costs, and experimental investigation of small polymer volume change could be time-consuming, an artificial neural network is developed to estimate polymer volume percentage.

Some of the experimental data used to test the network that showed a close agreement. Using 15 percent of polymer as optimum amount, 7.5 bbl of polymer is needed to recover 100 bbl oil. One should bear in mind that the polymer used here is not pure. If we could use pure polymer it may decrease the amount of polymer so the costs will decrease considerably.

Since this polymer is shear thickener for water, is not exorbitant in comparison to Polyacrylamide, and not biologically degraded, it could positively affect oil recovery under slow shear stresses.