Energy Geoscience (Jul 2024)
Quantitative analysis on resistant forces at oil-surfactant-rock interfaces with dynamic wettability characterization
Abstract
Adhesion of oil at rock surface plays an important role in the liberation of oil from micro-/nano-pores, especially for heavy oil that has extremely high viscosity. Although molecular dynamics simulation is widely used to study the interfacial interaction for some specific oil-water-rock systems, experimental measurements provide more realistic and reliable evidence. In this work, we propose a dynamic wettability characterization method to indirectly measure resistant forces at oil-surfactant-rock interfaces, including frictional force, wettability hysteresis force, and viscous force, which are parallel with the oil-solid interface. The adhesive force, which is normal to the oil-solid interface is calculated through measurement of work of adhesion. The results show that work of adhesion instead of contact angle can better describe the adhesion of oil at solid surface. The effect of surfactant concentration on work of adhesion is different for water-wet and oil-wet surfaces. Moreover, average viscous forces are calculated through force analysis on oil drops moving along solid surface in different surfactant environments. It is found that viscous force has a magnitude comparable to the frictional force during the movement, while the wettability hysteresis force is negligible. On the other hand, the adhesive force calculated from the work of adhesion is also comparable to the viscous force. Therefore, both the resistant forces parallel with and normal to the oil-solid interface should be minimized for the liberation of oil from rock surface. This work proposes a simple method to evaluate the wetting capability of different surfactants and measure the adhesive force between heavy oil and rock surfaces indirectly, which provides insight into the adhesion of heavy oil at rock surface and would be valuable for the development of surfactant-based oil recovery methods.
