Dependency of Critical Micellization Concentration of an Anionic Surfactant on Temperature and Potassium Chloride Salt

Abstract

Surfactant flooding is an amazing approach which is a subgroup of enhanced oil recovery approaches. Two phenomena which are involved in oil recovery with the aim of surfactant are wettability alteration and interfacial tension reduction between oil and water phases. Reservoir fluid contains a mixture of some slats which have a major effect on surfactant properties. Also the temperature in the reservoirs affects the surfactant flooding condition. Salinity and temperature play a vital role in the performance, effectiveness and successfulness of the surfactant flooding which highly affect on critical micelle concentration (CMC) of the used surfactant. Put another way, the CMC of the surfactant depends on the salinity and temperature of the solution. The goal of this study is figuring out the CMC of alkylebenzene sulfonic acid (ABSA) in various conditions which include different potassium chloride concentrations and various temperatures; this was done by the conductivity method. The CMC value of ABSA as an anionic surfactant was gained with the aim of electrical conductivity approach. Thanks to the experimental results of this article, the CMC of the ABSA is highly dependent on the KCl concentration which is reduced by increasing the KCl content of the solution. On the other hand, the CMC of ABSA slightly depends on the magnitude of the temperature which varied from 25°C to 70°C with increments of 5°C. Finally, CMC value of the aforementioned surfactant increased versus increasing the temperature of the solution.