Abstract
The higher cost of chemical surfactants has been one of the main reasons for their limited used in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) process. Hence, the reason for developing lignin-based surfactant is to lower the cost of chemicals as it does not tie to the price of crude oil as compared to petroleum-based surfactants. Besides, lignin is biodegradable and easily extracted from plant waste. The objectives of this study are to determine the formulations of the lignin-based surfactant for EOR applications and to determine the oil recovery performance of the formulated surfactants through surfactant flooding. The lignin-based surfactants were formulated by mixing the lignin with the amine (polyacrylamide or hexamethylenetetramine) and the surfactant sodium dodecylbenzenesulfonate in a 20,000 ppm NaCl brine. Interfacial tension (IFT) of the formulated lignin-based surfactant is measured at ambient temperature using the spinning drop method. The displacement experiments were conducted at room temperature in glass beads pack holders filled with glass beads, saturated with paraffin and brine. The results of the study showed that the best formulation of lignin-based surfactant is using hexamethylenetetramine as the amine, lignin, and sodium dodecylbenzenesulfonate at 2% total active concentration. The oil recovery and interfacial tension using the lignin amine system is comparable with the commercial petroleum sulfonate system.
Highlights
Surfactant flooding is an enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technique that has a decent potential application in Malaysia’s oilfield
Du et al, [1] in their study has carried out evaluation on the most suitable enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technique to be applied in St
Offshore Sabah, Malaysia. ey identified that alkaline-surfactant-polymer (ASP) flooding is the best EOR technique for augmenting a definitive ultimate recovery for St
Summary
Surfactant flooding is an enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technique that has a decent potential application in Malaysia’s oilfield. Additional oil recovery in the displacement test utilizing the surfactant created from pyrolysis oil of oil palm shell demonstrated that it is material with decent potential application in EOR. No displacement test in porous media was carried out to test the effectiveness of these formulated lignin-based surfactants. In-house prepared lignin-based surfactant blends were evaluated using two methods to describe its effectiveness, namely, IFT measurement and displacement test in porous media. First experiment is the formulation of lignin-based surfactant and its interfacial tension measurement with paraffin oil. E horizontal displacement test was carried out by saturating 20,000 ppm NaCl brine in the glass beads packed holder at room temperature, 25°C. Paraffin oil was injected into the sandpack holder until irreducible water saturation Swir, or minimum water saturation was achieved to represent oil migration into the reservoir. e artificial porous media was left to age for 24 hours, similar
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