Molecular Dynamics Studies on Effective Surface-Active Additives: Toward Hard Water-Resistant Chemical Flooding for Enhanced Oil Recovery
| Autor: | Yiling Nan, Wenhui Li, Zhehui Jin |
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| Rok vydání: | 2022 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Langmuir. 38:4802-4811 |
| ISSN: | 1520-5827 0743-7463 |
| DOI: | 10.1021/acs.langmuir.1c03040 |
| Popis: | Divalent ions, which are omnipresent in brine, may be detrimental to surfactant functionalities during chemical flooding in the enhanced oil recovery (EOR) process. Surfactant blending is one potential solution to overcome such an adverse effect. Herein, we report a molecular dynamics (MD) study to investigate the molecular arrangement and possible applications of surfactant blending in hard water-resistant chemical flooding for oil recovery. We chose commonly used anionic surfactants, sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), as primary surfactants. The non-ionic (propanol) and cationic [cetrimonium bromide (CTAB)] surfactants with a wide range of concentrations are introduced to the primary system. We demonstrate that CTAB can disaggregate the cation bridging when their concentration is above a certain threshold. This threshold value is related to the surfactant and cosurfactant surface charge in the interface region. The cation bridging density is maintained at a low level when the sum of surfactants and cosurfactant interface charges is neutral or positive. On the other hand, propanol barely disaggregates the cation bridging. When propanol concentration is above a certain value, it even facilitates the cation bridging formation. Both propanol and CTAB can further decrease the oil-brine interfacial tension (IFT) while having different efficacies (IFT decrement rate is different as their interface concentration increases). More rapid IFT decrement is observed when cation bridging is disaggregated ( |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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