Measurements of the Contact Angles for Various Fluids Which Are Widely Used in the Oilfields to Improve Oil Recovery

Abstract

Contact angle measurements are important to determine surface and interfacial tension between solids and fluids. A ‘water-wet’ condition on the rock face is necessary in order to extract oil. In this research, the objectives are to determine the wettability (water-wet or oil-wet), analyze how different brine concentrations will affect the wettability, and study the effect of the temperature on the dynamic contact angle measurements. This will be carried out by using the Cahn Dynamic Contact Angle. Analyzer DCA 315 to measure the contact angle between different fluids such as surfactant, alkaline, and mineral oil. This instrument is also used to measure the surface properties such as surface tension, contact angle, and interfacial tension of solid and liquid samples by using the Wilhelmy technique. The work used different surfactant and oil mixed with different alkaline concentrations. Varying alkaline concentrations from 20ml to 1ml were used, whilst keeping the surfactant concentration constant at 50ml.. It was observed that contact angle measurements and surface tension increase with increased alkaline concentrations. Therefore, we can deduce that they are directly proportional. We noticed that changing certain values on the software affected our results. It was found that after calculating the density and inputting it into the CAHN software, more accurate readings for the surface tension were obtained. We anticipate that the surfactant and alkaline can change the surface tension of the solid surface. In our research, surfactant is desirable as it maintains a high surface tension even when alkaline percentage is increased.