Study to improve an amphoteric sulfonate alkyl ester surfactant by mixing with nonionic surfactant to reduce brine–waxy oil interfacial tension and to increase oil recovery in sandstone reservoir: T-KS field, Indonesia

Abstract

Crude oil with a high wax content and high pour point can be very challenging when enhanced oil recovery by surfactant flooding is to be applied. High wax content in crude oil will lead to high intermolecular interaction because of the increasing cohesion forces. It causes interfacial (IFT) tension between oil and brine to be high. Hence, oil recovery is relatively low. This paper presents formulation of an amphoteric sulfonate alkyl ester (SAE) surfactant with a nonionic surfactant (ester group) to reduce oil-brine IFT in waxy oil of T-KS field, in Indonesia. The ion-dipole forces may occur between SAE surfactant and nonionic cosurfactant molecules. The forces cause sulfonate chain to be attracted to oil phase. The formulated surfactant produces low interfacial tension between brine and waxy oil of T-KS oil field. Its ability to displace remaining oil in the pore space was also tested using coreflood tests. These tests demonstrate considerably good incremental recovery.

Application of rhamnolipid biosurfactant produced by Pseudomonas aeruginosa in microbial-enhanced oil recovery (MEOR)

“…Among the technologies used in EOR, the use of operations to reduce interfacial tension by surfactants is implemented worldwide (Austad and Taugbøl 1995;Al-Wahaibi et al 2014;Nabipour et al 2017;Marhaendrajana et al 2018), because its ability to reduce the interfacial tension between water and oil allows the oil trapped in the pores of the reservoir by capillary forces to be recovered (Van Dyke et al 1991;Pornsunthorntawee et al 2008;Li et al 2012;Guo et al 2015;Zhang et al 2015;Kumar and Mandal 2017). However, to achieve a satisfactory result, high concentrations of surfactants are required (Sabatini et al 2000;Fernandes et al 2016), which ultimately depends upon high costs for the use of chemical surfactants.…”

Modification Wettability and Interfacial Tension of Heavy Crude Oil by Green Bio-surfactant Based on Bacillus licheniformis and Rhodococcus erythropolis Strains under Reservoir Conditions: Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery

“…These processes can enhance oil recovery by only 30–50% . Therefore, there is an urgent need for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) using newly developed technologies. , The use of surfactant in interfacial tension reduction between rock pores/oil/water is one of the most implemented EOR technologies worldwide due to its ability to recover oil trapped in reservoir pores via capillary forces. − …”