Design of an optimal middle phase microemulsion for ultra high saline brine using hydrophilic lipophilic deviation (HLD) method

The research published in the past half century indicates that surfactant interfacial performance in producing low tension or high solubilization with polar oils is not generally attained with pure conventional species exhibiting well‐defined polar and nonpolar parts. The improvement trends reached with surfactant mixtures as well as the introduction of additives like cosurfactants and linkers lead to the introduction of the so‐called extended surfactants, whose structure includes an intermediate polarity spacer between the hydrophilic head and the lipophilic tail. Recent investigations on different kinds of surfactants in a variety of applications—such as detergency, cosmetics, enhanced oil recovery or crude demulsifying, and vegetable oil extraction—indicate that these extended surfactants are likely to be particularly performing with oils containing polar groups, such as triacylglycerols and asphaltenic crudes. Possible applications of extended surfactants in enhanced oil recovery, crude emulsion breaking, detergency and cleaning, medicine and cosmetics vehicles, and natural oil extraction as well as some other cases are quickly reviewed.

Section: Physicochemical Properties Of Extended Surfactantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extended Surfactants Including an Alkoxylated Central Part Intermediate Producing a Gradual Polarity Transition—A Review of the Properties Used in Applications Such as Enhanced Oil Recovery and Polar Oil Solubilization in Microemulsions

Salager

Forgiarini

Márquez

2019

“…This issue, particularly high-salinity problems, is not discussed here since it has been extensively reported in the literature, with many examples, although without quantitative rules [82,[84][85][86][87][88][89][90][91][92][93][94][95].…”

Section: Insensitivity To a Formulation Variable Change Reduced Sensimentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This change in formulation with surfactant concentration means that a surfactant concentration scan can produce an optimum concentration, at which the interfacial formulation corresponds to HLD = 0 [79,95,118,119,127,129,130].…”

Section: Effect On Formulation Of the Partitioning Of The Different Smentioning

confidence: 99%

How to Attain Ultralow Interfacial Tension and Three‐Phase Behavior with Surfactant Formulation for Enhanced Oil Recovery: A Review. Part 4: Robustness of the Optimum Formulation Zone Through the Insensibility to Some Variables and the Occurrence of Complex Artifacts

Salager

Antón

Arandia

et al. 2017

In enhanced oil recovery, not only the low‐tension performance, but also the robustness at optimum formulation is an important issue. The fourth part of our review series is dedicated to robustness, defined as the width of the zone exhibiting three‐phase behavior around the optimum formulation, whatever the scanned variable. It is first corroborated from a screening of the available data in the literature that the tension minimum is inversely proportional to the square of the three‐phase range in the HLD scale. However, since there is still an inaccuracy of about a factor 10 in the tension minimum, some significant improvement can be attained in some cases by increasing the three‐phase behavior width in two ways. The first approach consists of finding systems that are insensitive to some formulation variable such as temperature, surfactant mixture composition or concentration, and water‐to‐oil ratio. The second way is to produce an artifact through which the optimum formulation is produced twice in a scan. If the distance between the two events in the scan is reduced down to be zero, their corresponding three‐phase behavior zones merge and result in a wider WIII region with a low tension. Several cases of such events are reported: alkaline scans, anionic‐nonionic and anionic‐cationic mixture changes, linear change in composition in three‐surfactant mixture, partial precipitation from a surfactant mixture in a salinity scan, and excessive partitioning of polyethoxylated nonionics. More complex transitions with three effects in a single scan or three concomitantly scanned variables show even more possibilities in practice.

“…The mixing rule was also found to be applicable to the mixture of oils with different EACN. These findings were demonstrated to be useful in finding the Cc value of a surfactant that requires a cosurfactant to form microemulsions (Acosta, ; Acosta and Bhakta, ; Acosta et al, ; Budhathoki et al, ; Nguyen and Sabatini, , ; Witthayapanyanon et al, , ). The research done by Acosta (), Acosta et al (), and Acosta and Bhakta () further emphasized the correlation between system parameters and microemulsion phase behaviors based on the HLD models.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Application of the Hydrophilic–Lipophilic Deviation Concept to Surfactant Characterization and Surfactant Selection for Enhanced Oil Recovery

Nguyên¹,

Morgan²,

Poindexter³

et al. 2019

The hydrophilic–lipophilic deviation (HLD) concept has been demonstrated to be useful in determining characteristic curvature (Cc) of a surfactant. Cc is a surfactant parameter that reflects the hydrophobicity/hydrophilicity or the tendency of the surfactant to form microemulsions in an oil–water system. In order for the Cc value to be calculated, the formation of the optimum Winsor III microemulsion of oil and water systems under specific salinity and temperature conditions is required. Surfactant Cc values have been widely used to quantitatively screen and select a suitable surfactant in formulations for different application areas, especially enhanced oil recovery (EOR). The HLD concept is an effective tool for designing new surfactant molecules to meet the target Cc value for a specific formulation condition. The HLD equation indicates the dependence of a microemulsion system on the changes of various system parameters. This article demonstrates how the HLD equation can be derived in different ways depending on the characteristics of the surfactant to identify the proper experimental approach so that the Cc values of different types of surfactants can be determined. Three types of surfactants were studied, including nonionic alcohol ethoxylates, anionic alkyl propoxy ethoxy sulfates, and carboxylates. The application of the HLD concept to surfactant selection for EOR application was also demonstrated.