Growing oil demand and the gradual depletion of conventional oil reserves by primary extraction has highlighted the need for enhanced oil recovery techniques to increase the potential of existing reservoirs and facilitate the recovery of more complex unconventional oils. This paper describes the interfacial and colloidal forces governing oil film displacement from solid surfaces. Direct contact of oil with the reservoir rock transforms the solid surface from a water-wet to neutrally-wet and oil-wet as a result of the deposition of polar components of the crude oil, with lower oil recovery from oil-wet reservoirs. To enhance oil recovery, chemicals can be added to the injection water to modify the oil-water interfacial tension and solid-oil-water three-phase contact angle. In the presence of certain surfactants and nanoparticles, a ruptured oil film will dewet to a new equilibrium contact angle, reducing the work of adhesion to detach an oil droplet from the solid surface. Dynamics of contact-line displacement are considered and the effect of surface active agents on enhancing oil displacement discussed. The paper is intended to provide an overview of the interfacial and colloidal forces controlling the process of oil film displacement and droplet detachment for enhanced oil recovery. A comprehensive summary of chemicals tested is provided.

Surfactant flooding is one technique of chemical enhanced oil recovery (EOR) aimed at improving the microscopic displacement efficiency of trapped residual oil via reducing the oil–water interfacial tension and wettability alteration. Success of surfactant flooding strongly relies on surfactant loss through its adsorption onto reservoir minerals to ensure maximum transfer to target reservoir. The current study examines the adsorption behavior of saponin natural surfactant onto carbonate rock outcrops. As an environmentally friendly extract from plants, saponins have shown the potential to increase oil recovery, although saponin loss or adsorption on surfaces is yet to be studied. Common synthetic surfactants of various types (i.e., cationic and anionic) and different molecular structures (other nonionic surfactants) have also been studied to provide comparisons to saponin. The surfactant adsorption onto carbonate samples was studied by batch adsorption experiments, with the residual surfactant concentration determined by the surface tension technique. It was found that saponin, a natural nonionic surfactant, adsorbed less than the ionic surfactants, since saponin adsorption is not governed by electrostatic interactions but weaker hydrogen bonding. Such data concludes that saponins are likely to yield less retention than the ionic surfactants, but compared to other nonionic surfactants its retention is greater. This is likely attributed to differing surfactant molecular structures. Due to its branch-like structure with more terminal functional groups, saponin adsorbs more on the rock surface compared to other long-chain nonionic surfactants. The findings of the current study provide a useful guide in surfactant selection for EOR and highlight a potential of natural and environmentally friendly surfactants.

No abstract

ReuseThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND) licence. This licence only allows you to download this work and share it with others as long as you credit the authors, but you can't change the article in any way or use it commercially. More information and the full terms of the licence here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ TakedownIf you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing eprints@whiterose.ac.uk including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. AbstractThe complexity associated with droplets spreading on surfaces has attracted significant interest for several decades. Sustained activity results from the many natural and manufactured systems that are reliant on droplet-substrate interactions and spreading. Interfacial shear rheology and its influence on the dynamics of droplet spreading has to date received little attention. In the current study, saponin -aescin was used as an interfacial shear rheology modifier, partitioning at the air-water interface to form a strongly elastic interface (G'/G" ~ 6) within 1 min aging.The droplet spreading dynamics of Newtonian (water, 5 wt% ethanol, 0.0015 wt% N-dodecyl -D-glucopyranoside) and non-Newtonian (xanthan gum) fluids were shown to proceed with a time-dependent power-law dependence of ~ 0.50 and ~ 0.10 (Tanner's law) in the inertial and viscous regimes of spreading, respectively. However, water droplets stabilized by saponinaescin were shown to accelerate droplet spreading in the inertial regime with a depreciating time-dependent power-law of 1.05 and 0.61, eventually exhibiting a power-law dependence of ~ 0.10 in the viscous regime of spreading. The accelerated rate of spreading is attributed to the potential energy as the interfacial film yields as well as relaxation of the crumpled interfacial film during spreading. Even though the strongly elastic film ruptures to promote droplet spreading, interfacial elasticity is retained enhancing the dampening of droplet oscillations following detachment from the dispensing capillary.