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How to Attain Ultralow Interfacial Tension and Three‐Phase Behavior with Surfactant Formulation for Enhanced Oil Recovery: A Review. Part 1. Optimum Formulation for Simple Surfactant–Oil–Water Ternary Systems
Author(s) -
Salager JeanLouis,
Forgiarini Ana M.,
Bullón Johnny
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
journal of surfactants and detergents
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.349
H-Index - 48
eISSN - 1558-9293
pISSN - 1097-3958
DOI - 10.1007/s11743-013-1470-4
Subject(s) - pulmonary surfactant , surface tension , chemistry , enhanced oil recovery , ternary operation , thermodynamics , work (physics) , phase (matter) , chromatography , chemical engineering , organic chemistry , biochemistry , physics , computer science , engineering , programming language
Enhanced recovery of crude oil by surfactant flooding requires the attainment of an ultralow interfacial tension. Since Winsor's work in the 1950s it has been known that a minimum interfacial tension and a concomitant three‐phase behavior of a surfactant–oil–water system occurs when the interactions of the surfactant and the oil and water phases are exactly equal. It has been known since the 1970s that these conditions are attained when a linear correlation is satisfied between the formulation variables, which are characteristic parameters of the substances as well as the temperature. This first part of our review on how to attain ultralow interfacial tension for enhanced oil recovery shows how formulation scan techniques using these correlations are used to determine an optimum formulation and to characterize unknown surfactants and oils. The physicochemical significance of the original empirical correlation is reported as the surfactant affinity difference or hydrophilic–lipophilic deviation model. We report the range of accurate validity of, and how to test, this simple model with four variables.