Abstract
Surfactants and nanoparticles play crucial roles in controlling the oil-water interfacial phenomenon. The natural oil-wet mineral nanoparticles that exist in crude oil could remarkably affect water-oil interfacial characteristics. Most of recent studies focus on the effect of hydrophilic nanoparticles dispersed in water on the oil-water interfacial phenomenon for the nanoparticle enhanced oil recovery. However, studies of the impact of the oil-wet nanoparticles existed in crude oil on interfacial behaviour are rare. In this study, the impacts of Span 80 surfactant and hydrophobic SiO2 nanoparticles on the crude oil-water interfacial characteristics were studied by measuring the dynamic and equilibrium crude oil-water interfacial tensions. The results show the existence of nanoparticles leading to higher crude oil-water interfacial tensions than those without nanoparticles at low surfactant concentrations below 2000 ppm. At a Span 80 surfactant concentration of 1000 ppm, the increase of interfacial tension caused by nanoparticles is largest, which is around 8.6 mN/m. For high Span 80 surfactant concentrations, the less significant impact of nanoparticles on the crude oil-water interfacial tension is obtained. The effect of nanoparticle concentration on the crude oil-water interfacial tension was also investigated in the existence of surfactant. The data indicates the less significant influence of nanoparticles on the crude oil-water interfacial tension at high nanoparticle concentration in the presence of Span 80 surfactant. This study confirms the influences of nanoparticle-surfactant interaction and competitive surfactant molecule adsorption on the nanoparticles surfaces and the crude oil-water interface.
Highlights
The surface-active substances that exist in crude oil-water systems, such as chemical surfactants and nanoparticles, could contribute to generating a stable emulsion [1,2,3]
The results confirm a strong interaction between Span 80 surfactant and hydrophobic SiO2 nanoparticles, and imply the adsorption of surfactant molecules on the nanoparticles with a large specific area leading to the surfactant concentration reduction on the oil-water interface
The data reveals the effect of the concentration of Span 80 surfactant on the crude oil-water interfacial tension with hydrophobic SiO2 nanoparticles
Summary
The surface-active substances that exist in crude oil-water systems, such as chemical surfactants and nanoparticles, could contribute to generating a stable emulsion [1,2,3]. The development of exploitation of many oil fields has recently entered the second and tertiary recoveries. The water injection in the crude oil has been further increased during the second recovery. The presence of surfactant in chemical flooding in the tertiary recovery and the natural mineral particle or the addition of nanoparticles causes severe emulsion formation problems. Nanoparticles combined with surfactants have been recently used and investigated in emulsification [6] and enhanced oil recovery processes [7,8,9,10,11,12]
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