Study of Compatibility between Organoclays and Organic Dispersant Media through Foster Swelling

Abstract

Foster swelling is one of the methods used to determine the compatibility between organoclays and organic dispersant media, improving the quality of organoclays. The need for replacing imported clays by national ones for the oil industry has recently resulted in the discovery of new deposits of smectites in the cites of Cubati and Pedra Lavrada, PB, reflecting great social and economic effects for that region. So, the objective of this work is to obtain organoclays from smectites from Pedra Lavrada, PB, aiming at the study of how to make these clays suitable with some organic dispersant media through Foster swelling. After organofilization, the clays were characterized by X-ray diffraction and Foster swelling. The results pointed that some media are compatible with organoclays, being diesel, kerosene and varsol the descendant order of compatibility between the clays and the organic media.