Comparative Study on Surfactants Mixtures in Aqueous Solution at Atmospheric Pressure and 10 bar Reservoir Atmosphere

Abstract

This paper considers anionic and nonionic surfactants, as candidates for crude oil production by enhancement applications. In this study some colloidal properties of surfactants were tested by conventional and new test methods. The oil in water type emulsions have great importance in the petroleum industry. The stability of crude oil in water emulsions are investigated in a wide range of physical and chemical circumstances. Investigations at 10 bar are needed to get knowledges on the real conditions of the given petroleum exploration processes. A special glass cell was used for the tests of the mixtures various crude oil-water emulsions under hydrocarbon gas atmosphere and for the oil disclapement efficiency. Based on the experimental results it was found that emulsifying capacity was changed significantly by the real process conditions. The decrease of the density of hydrocarbon phase was contributed to the overall reduction in the efficiency of emulsifiers also occurred. Based on the experimented data it is supported to pay more attention to apply the real test conditions or approximate the real values.

Adsorption of Sodium Hexadecyl Sulfate and Triton X from Binary Aqueous Solutions at Thermally Graphitized Carbon Black

“…Surfactants adsorption at a solution/solid interface is very important phenomenon in many colloid-chemical processes, including flotation of ores, oil recovery, foam forming, detergency, stabilization of the colloids, emulsification, chemical synthesis and water treatment. In many cases the surfactants mixtures are more beneficial than the single surfactants [1][2][3][4]. The use of surfactant mixtures allows to more effectively affect the properties of dispersed systems than the individual components.…”

“…These features are due to the essential variation in the component properties in the mixture, including enhancement or attenuation of surfactants adsorption at an interface. Thus, wetting and adsorption from binary surfactant mixtures at solid surfaces of diverse nature are significantly different compared to the solutions of the individual surfactants [2,3,5]. However, there are very limited number of studies related to adsorption of the surfactant mixtures and these studies have been performed mainly on hydrophilic surfaces [6][7][8].…”