Effects of Triglyceride Molecular Structure on Optimum Formulation of Surfactant‐Oil‐Water Systems

Abstract

The effects of triglyceride molecular structure on the formulation of surfactant-oil-water systems were evaluated by comparing the optimum salinity and the dynamic interfacial tensions. The systems contained an anionic extended surfactant and triglyceride oils with different chain lengths and degrees of unsaturation. The results show that with an increasing degree of oil unsaturation (more double bonds), surfactant interactions with the triglycerides become weaker, thus requiring higher optimum salinity and resulting in higher interfacial tension values. Effects of ester groups and chain length of triglycerides are also discussed and the EACN of the triglycerides and vegetable oils studied are reported.

Characterization of Crude Oil Equivalent Alkane Carbon Number (EACN) for Surfactant Flooding Design

“…Previously, a very good linear relationship between lnS* and EACN had been reported in literature using different types of extended surfactants. [30][31][32] To verify the validity of Eq. 11 obtained in this study, the optimal salinities for additional oil systems, including pentane (C5), heptane (C7), and tetradecane (C14) were explored.…”

“…[32] The Cc for the extended surfactant determined in this study was -2.41, which falls into the range of -3.1 to -0.031 reported in the literature. [30][31][32][33] Figure 8 showed equilibrium IFT as a function of electrolyte concentration (salinity scan) for the systems of extended surfactant for different crude oils tested (a total of 12 crudes). Table 4 summarized the resulted optimal salinities for the system of crude oils and the surfactant solution.…”

“…2-3 using some of the extended surfactants. [30][31][32] However, only a limited number of studies have focused on determining the EACN of crude oils, 3 which is an important tool for designing surfactant flooding. In addition, to the best of our knowledge, there are no studies reporting the determination of the EACN of crude oils using extended surfactants.…”

Phase Behavior of Microemulsions Formulated with Sodium Alkyl Polypropylene Oxide Sulfate and a Cationic Hydrotrope

“…[3,4] The IFT values were measured for systems as a function of electrolyte and surfactant concentration for polar and nonpolar oils and found to produce ultra low IFT even with highly hydrophopic oils such as triglycerides. [5,6] The effect of temperature and other variables on the optimum formulation of such systems were also studied. [7] An increase in temperature was found to produce a decrease in surfactant hydrophilicity similar to the behavior of nonionic surfactants.…”

Influence of the Mixed Propoxy/Ethoxy Spacer Arrangement Order and of the Ionic Head Group Nature on the Adsorption and Aggregation of Extended Surfactants

“…Only a few experimental species of the alkyl polypropylene oxide sulfate type have been made available by surfactant manufacturers and have been tested in applications such as detergency or solubilization of polar oils [11][12][13][14][15][16]. Extended surfactants behave in some aspect as conventional ones and may be mixed with other surfactants with fairly linear mixing rules [17,18].…”