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Abstract
Alkyl polyglycoside (APG) is a green surfactant with excellent interfacial activity, emulsified ability, foaming performance and wettability, which has great potential in enhancing heavy oil recovery at high-temperature and high-salinity condition. In this paper, surface tension, interfacial tension, emulsifying ability, emulsion stability and emulsified oil droplet size were investigated for APG. Besides, the effect of temperature and salinity on interfacial activity and emulsification properties of APG was also studied. The results showed that APG had excellent interfacial activity and emulsification property among all these surfactants. Besides, the interfacial activity and emulsification properties of APG almost did not decrease, and even got better along with the increasing temperature or salinity, while those of other surfactants became worse in different degree. The incremental oil recovery by using APG at 90 °C and the salinity of 30 g/L can reach to 10.1% which is nearly two times higher than that of common EOR surfactants. These results indicated that APG is an efficient surfactant for enhancing heavy oil recovery at high-temperature and high-salinity condition.
Highlights
With the depletion of conventional oil reserve, the effective development of the massive amount of heavy oil becomes increasingly important
Surface tension, interfacial tension, emulsifying ability, emulsion stability and emulsified oil droplet size were investigated for Alkyl polyglycoside (APG) and other common EOR surfactants, and the effect of temperature and salinity on interfacial activity and emulsification properties of APG was studied
APG has the best surface activity. It has the lowest SFTmin (27.9 mN/m) which means the ability of decreasing the surface tension (SFT) and the minimum critical micelle concentration (CMC) (0.008%) which represents the efficiency of decreasing the SFT; comparatively speaking, the CMC of the anionic surfactants (SLPS, heavy alkylbenzene sulfonate (HABS), AOS, ABS) is higher than that of nonionic ones (APG, OP-10) and zwitterionic ones (BS-12, alcohol polyoxyethylene ether sulfate (AES)), and the S FTmin shows the similar rule
Summary
With the depletion of conventional oil reserve, the effective development of the massive amount of heavy oil becomes increasingly important. Superior EOR surfactant systems must have good interfacial activity and can reduce the oil/water IFT to the ultra-low value. Kutschmann et al (Kutschmann et al 1995) and Kahlweit et al (Kahlweit et al 1995) determined the IFT in combination with linear alcohols as co-solvents They all identified that the surfactant formulations could obtain an ultra-low IFT in brine/alkane or brine/xylene systems. The objective of this study is to assess the technical feasibility of APG for enhancing heavy oil recovery at high-temperature and high-salinity condition. Surface tension, interfacial tension, emulsifying ability, emulsion stability and emulsified oil droplet size were investigated for APG and other common EOR surfactants, and the effect of temperature and salinity on interfacial activity and emulsification properties of APG was studied. Sandpack flooding tests were conducted to examine the effectiveness of APG on enhanced heavy oil recovery at high-temperature and high-salinity condition
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