Novosad, J., SPE, Petroleum Recovery Inst.
Abstract
Experimental procedures designed to differentiate between surfactant retained in porous media because of adsorption and surfactant retained because Of unfavorable phase behavior are developed and tested with three types of surfactants. Several series of experiments with systematic changes in one variable such as surfactant/cosurfactant ratio, slug size, or temperature are performed, and overall surfactant retention then is interpreted in terms of adsorption and losses caused by unfavorable phase behavior.
Introduction
Adsorption of surfactants considered for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) applications has been studied extensively in the last few years since it has been shown that it is possible to develop surfactant systems that displace oil from porous media almost completely when used in large quantities. Effective oil recovery by surfactants is not a question of principle but rather a question of economics. Since surfactants are more expensive than crude oil, development of a practical EOR technology depends on how much surfactant can be sacrificed economically while recovering additional crude oil from a reservoir.It was recognized earlier that adsorption may be only one of a number of factors that contribute to total surfactant retention. Other mechanisms may include surfactant entrapment in an immobile oil phase surfactant precipitation by divalent ions, surfactant precipitation caused by a separation of the cosurfactant from the surfactant, and surfactant precipitation resulting from chromatographic separation of different surfactant specks.
The principal objective of this work is to evaluate the experimental techniques that can be used for measuring surfactant adsorption and to study experimentally two mechanisms responsible for surfactant retention. Specifically, we try to differentiate between the adsorption of surfactants at the solid/liquid interface and the retention of the surfactants because of trapping in the immobile hydrocarbon phase that remains within the core following a surfactant flood.
Measurement of Adsorption at the Solid/Liquid Interface
Previous adsorption measurements of surfactants considered for EOR produced adsorption isotherms of unusual shapes and unexpected features. Primarily, an adsorption maximum was observed when total surfactant retention was plotted against the concentration of injected surfactant. Numerous explanations have been offered for these peaks, such as a formation of mixed micelles, the effects of structure-forming and structurebreaking cations, and the precipitation and consequent redissolution of divalent ions. It is difficult to assess which of these effects is responsible for the peaks in a particular situation and their relative importance. However, in view of the number of physicochemical processes taking place simultaneously and the large number of components present in most systems, it seems that we should not expect smooth monotonically increasing isotherms patterned after adsorption isothemes obtained with one pure component and a solvent. Also, it should be realized that most experimental procedures do not yield an amount of surfactant adsorbed but rather a measure of the surface excess.An adsorption isotherm, expressed in terms of the surface excess as a function of an equilibrium surfactant concentration, by definition must contain a maximum if the data are measured over a sufficiently wide range of concentrations.
SPEJ
P. 962^
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