Study On Surfactants Based On Vegetable Oil By Emulsification Effect

Abstract

Nowadays, the crude oil demand increasing with the growing the energy and plastic product demand, nevertheless the crude oil stocks are finite. The main part of crude oil content in reservoir in not recoverable with commercial recovery methods (primary and secondary). Widespread method of enhancing the crude oil production recovery is the tertiary crude oil recovery where many times use chemical agents. One of these methods when surfactants and surfactant mixtures are used in polymer-surfactant flooding. In this case the effective surfactant selection is required. An important step of the selection is the investigation of emulsification effect. There are lot of variable and human factor in the classic manual emulsifying effect measurements what can cause mistakes. Our aim was decreasing the possible inaccuracy. To achieve this goal, the standardised (ISO 6611 and ASTM D1401) application in crude oil – surfactants – brine system was investigated, what used in case of crude oil derivatives. Surfactants/surfactant mixtures based on vegetable oil was used to investigate the emulsifying effect with the classic manual method and a new automated method. These results were compared and the conclusions to applicability the automatic method in surfactant selection was drew.