Abstract
ABSTRACT In view of the world-wide shortage of petroleum and the fact that a large amount of residual oil will remain in the reservoir after the primary recovery and water flooding stages, the use of Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) methods to recover as much as possible of this residual oil has become increasingly important worldwide. The predominant and most promising EOR technique is the micellar-polymer flooding process which uses a surface active agent (a surfactant) to decrease interfacial tension and hence allows oil to freely move from its original location through the porous media. The purpose of this paper is to present an experimental study of the factors affecting the equilibrium interfacial tension (IFT) at the oil/water interface. A large number of experiments was conducted to study the variations of IFT as a function of many parameters including reservoir temperature, pressure, surfactant concentration, and salinity. An Arabian heavy crude oil was used in the analysis along with three different synthetic surfactants and two formation waters. The pendent drop technique enhanced by video imaging was employed for measuring IFT. It was found that for the ranges of variables considered in this study, IFT decreases with temperature and salinity, increases with pressure, and decreases exponentially with surfactant concentration.
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