Effect of cationic surfactant addition on the drag reduction behaviour of anionic polymer solutions

Abstract

Although extensive research work has been carried out on the drag reduction (DR) behaviour of polymers and surfactants alone, little progress has been made on the synergistic effects of combined polymers and surfactants. In this work, the interactions between drag-reducing anionic polymer (copolymer of acrylamide and sodium acrylate, referred to as PAM) and drag-reducing cationic surfactant (octadecyltrimethylammonium chloride, OTAC) are studied. Solutions are prepared using both deionised (DI) water and tap water. The measurement of the physical properties such as electrical conductivity and viscosity are used to determine the surfactant-polymer interactions. The addition of surfactant to the polymer solution has a significant effect on the properties of the system. The critical micelle concentration (CMC) of the mixed surfactant-polymer system is found to be different from that of the surfactant alone. With the addition of surfactant to a polymer solution, a substantial decrease in the viscosity occurs. The observed changes in the viscosity of mixed polymer-surfactant system are explained in terms of the changes in the extension of polymeric chains, resulting from polymer-surfactant interactions. The anionic PAM chains tend to collapse upon the addition of cationic OTAC. The pipeline flow behaviour of PAM/OTAC mixtures is found to be consistent with the bench scale results. The DR ability of PAM is reduced upon the addition of OTAC. At low concentrations of PAM, the effect of OTAC on the DR behaviour is more pronounced. The DR behaviour of polymer solutions is strongly influenced by the nature of water (DI or tap).

Enhancing the Drag Reduction Phenomenon within a Rotating Disk Apparatus Using Polymer-Surfactant Additives

“…In addition, the complex mixture formed from the combination of any two or more additives performs better than the individual parties. A similar observation was made in [24,29,30]. This performance was expected because of the successful interaction between the surfactant micelles and polymers chains that formed a viscoelastic polymer-surfactant complex.…”

“…These materials are called surfactants and research has been conducted on these materials to investigate their DR ability [21][22][23]. However, surfactants are less effective than polymers [24]; thus, alternative solutions are necessary. Therefore, different surfactants are combined with these polymers to improve the latter's DR effectiveness and mechanical degradation resistance.…”

“…Different complex mixtures have been used recently as DRAs in pipelines [24,30,31] and rotating disk apparatus [32][33][34][35]. Mohsenipour et al [24] studied the interaction between an anionic copolymer, which comprises acrylamide and sodium acrylate (referred to as PAM) and cationic surfactant of octadecyltrimethylammonium chloride (OTAC), in pipeline flow.…”

“…Mohsenipour et al [24] studied the interaction between an anionic copolymer, which comprises acrylamide and sodium acrylate (referred to as PAM) and cationic surfactant of octadecyltrimethylammonium chloride (OTAC), in pipeline flow. Deionized and tap water were used to prepare the complex solutions.…”

Exploring Viscoelastic Characteristics of Polymer-Water Solutions by Viscometric Analysis

“…It has an open-ended variant that can be mounted into the wall of a vessel container [7,[16][17][18][19]. Spindle is mounted in a chamber through which the liquid of interest flows, the schematic arrangement is shown in Fig.…”