New surfactant classes for enhanced oil recovery and their tertiary oil recovery potential
Abstract
We investigate four different types of surfactants for effectiveness in tertiary oil recovery (TOR). The selected surfactant formulations were tested for enhanced oil recovery using coreflood tests on Berea sandstones. In addition to the corefloods, one sandpack surfactant flood was performed. The porous media were conditioned to residual waterflood oil saturation prior to surfactant slug injection. This was followed by polymer drive slug injection, and incremental oil recovery was measured against time. The tested formulations were selected after an extensive research effort including measuring interfacial tensions (IFT) and adsorption behavior on kaolinite clay. Effective were low 1-naphthol concentrations dissolved in 1-butanol in alkyl polyglycoside surfactant formulations which led to significant additional incremental oil recovery (40% TOR) due to dramatic reductions in IFT. Three other types of surfactants in this study include: • a di-tridecyl sulfosuccinic acid ester, • coconut diethanolamide, and • alkylpropoxy sulfate sodium salts which led to TOR of 15%, 75% and 35–50%, respectively. These results indicate that a wide variety of surfactants can meet the technical requirements as enhanced oil recovery (EOR) agents.
Additional Information
© 2009 Elsevier B.V. Received 23 February 2009; accepted 14 December 2009. Available online 24 December 2009. The authors thank the Department of Energy (DE-FC26-01BC15362) for their financial support for this project, and the technical assistance of Chevron and Akzo Nobel. We also wish to thank the Cognis Corporation and Seppic Corporation for supplying APG surfactant samples.Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 18269
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.petrol.2009.12.009
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20100512-144915649
- DE-FC26-01BC15362
- Department of Energy
- Created
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2010-05-24Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-08Created from EPrint's last_modified field