Interaction between polymer and anionic/nonionic surfactants and its mechanism of enhanced oil recovery

ABSTRACT

Various experimental methods were used to investigate interaction between polymer and anionic/nonionic surfactants and mechanisms of enhanced oil recovery by anionic/nonionic surfactants in the present paper. The complex surfactant molecules are adsorbed in the mixed micelles or aggregates formed by the hydrophobic association of hydrophobic groups of polymers, making the surfactant molecules at oil-water interface reduce and the value of interfacial tension between oil and water increase. A dense spatial network structure is formed by the interaction between the mixed aggregates and hydrophobic groups of the polymer molecular chains, making the hydrodynamic volume of the aggregates and the viscosity of the polymer solution increase. Because of the formation of the mixed adsorption layer at oil and water interface by synergistic effect, ultra-low interfacial tension (∼2.0 × 10⁻³ mN/m) can be achieved between the novel surfactant system and the oil samples in this paper. Because of hydrophobic interaction, wettability alteration of oil-wet surface was induced by the adsorption of the surfactant system on the solid surface. Moreover, the studied surfactant system had a certain degree of spontaneous emulsification ability (D50 = 25.04 µm) and was well emulsified with crude oil after the mechanical oscillation (D50 = 4.27 µm).

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS:

• Anionic/nonionic surfactants
• emulsification
• interaction
• mechanism of enhanced oil recovery
• wettability alteration

Additional information

Funding

Financial support by the Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in University (IRT1294), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (13CX05019A & 15CX02006A), and National Natural Science Foundation of China (Youth Fund) (51704036) are all gratefully acknowledged.