Sulfonation of Expanded Polystyrene Post Consumption, Structural Analysis and Its Application in Chemical Enhanced Oil Recovery

Abstract

In this study, we selected two kinds of polystyrene (PS) from a whole solid waste mass, expanded (EPS) and extruded (XPS). These polymers were degassed in ethyl acetate (AcOEt) and sulfonated trough of two different methods. The sulfonated polystyrene (SPS) was characterized by IR and NMR techniques verifying it structure and reaching until 80 % of sulfonation degree. Finally, both PSS were used in simultaneous static adsorption test as potential sacrificial agent (SA) in chemical enhanced oil recovery (cEOR). The adsorption achieved for SEPS and SXPS were 73.002 mg/g and 131.208 mg/g, giving a 66.3 % and 37.0 % of adsorption reduction, respectively. Our sulfonated polymer results to be better than references SA’s, polyacrylate and sodium tetraborate.