Roles of Catanionic Surfactant Mixtures on the Stability of Foams in the Presence of Oil

Abstract

The stability of foams in the presence of oil is a crucial factor for foam displacement process in enhanced oil recovery. After the test of foam stability in the presence of oil of the mixtures of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) and dodecyltrimethylammonium bromide (C12TAB), “catanionic” surfactant mixtures are proposed as a novel agent to enhance the oil resistance of foam. Based on the investigations of the foam evolution and the interfacial properties, the mechanisms are demonstrated by means of approaches of multiple light scattering and interfacial dilational rheological experiments. Because of the electrostatic attraction between molecules with opposite charges, catanionic mixtures are highly close-packed and form dense adsorption layers, which possess high modulus. So when oil–aqueous and gas–aqueous interfaces are approaching each other, strong pseudoemulsion films are formed. The compact adsorption layers also inhibit the diffusion exchange between the interface and the bulk, and this is the key factor to decrease the interaction between the gas–aqueous and oil–aqueous interfaces of the pseudoemulsion film. These properties increase the enter barrier of the oil droplets to the film surface.

A Novel Approach to Stabilize Foam Using Fluorinated Surfactants

“…The increase in the bubble size indicates the decay in foam volume either due to coalescence or coarsening. Coalescence is the rupture of a liquid film that holds two neighboring bubbles, while the coarsening is the result of gas transfer from smaller to big bubbles leading to the disappearance of smaller bubbles [44]. The average bubble size of the foam generated using a mixture of surfactant-A and surfactant-B have the least bubble diameter for first fifty minutes.…”

Equilibrium and Dynamic Surface Properties of Cationic/Anionic Surfactant Mixtures Based on Carboxylate Gemini Surfactant

“…(Cirin et al, 2017;Liu et al, 2016;Zhang et al, 2017b). Among these surfactant mixtures, researches have paid more attention to the cationic/anionic surfactant mixtures due to the strongest interaction between the oppositely charged hydrophilic head groups (Chen et al, 2017;Wang et al, 2016aWang et al, , 2016bWang et al, , 2016c.…”

Investigation on Foam Self‐Generation Using In Situ Carbon Dioxide (CO2) for Enhancing Oil Recovery

“…Most likely, simultaneous adsorption may be taking place at the water/gas interface in the mixed system (SDS and LHSB) due to the strong interaction between the cationic group (i.e., amino [N + ]) of LHSB and anionic group (i.e., sulfonate [SO 3− ]) of SDS. The mixture of SDS and LHSB possesses a higher activity at the surface in comparison to the single surfactant or other mixtures, which favors the foaming performance (Li, Ma, & Thomas, ; Wang, Fang, & Gong, ; Wei et al, ). Therefore, mixtures of SDS and LHSB were selected for further investigations.…”