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Microemulsions in Enhanced Oil Recovery - A Review
Microemulsions in Enhanced Oil Recovery - A Review
Microemulsions in Enhanced Oil Recovery - A Review
10
4
mN m
1
. This decrease in interfacial tension allows spontaneous emulsication
and displacement of the oil (Poettmann, 1983; Lake, 1989). A small chemical slug (i.e.,
540% pore volumes) is injected into the oil reservoir during the process. This slug is
displaced through the reservoir by a polymer bank, which in turn is displaced by drive
water.
Role of Capillary and Viscous Forces on Oil Recovery
Under ordinary ooding conditions (water or immiscible uid), surface forces (capillary
forces) dominate the macroscopic displacement process and are responsible for trapping
a large portion of the oil within the pore structure of the reservoir rocks. Capillary
forces arise from the IFT between the oil and water phases, which resist applied viscous
forces externally and cause the injected water to bypass the resident oil. The microscopic
distribution of the trapped oil depends upon the hydrostatic equilibrium condition and
is a function of factors such as wettability of the rock and pressure in the uid phases.
However, the viscous forces dominate the macroscopic displacement process if the ood
rate is made sufciently high (Tabsr, 1969). The predominant mechanism to recover this
oil is by lowering the IFT through the addition of suitable chemicals (surfactants). Lower
interfacial forces recover additional oil by reducing these capillary forces. This trapping
of the resident oil can be expressed as a competition between viscous forces mobilizing
the oil and capillary forces trapping the oil.
In order to determine whether viscous or capillary forces are dominating the displace-
ment process, it is convenient to consider the dependence of the displacement efciency
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Microemulsions in Enhanced Oil Recovery 1357
on a suitable dimensionless parameter known as capillary number (N
ca
), dened in Eq. (4)
N
ca
D
j
w
U
w
;
ow
(4)
where j
w
and U
w
are the aqueous-phase viscosity and ow rate per unit cross-sectional
area, ;
ow
is the interfacial tension between oil and water, and is the porosity of the
reservoir rock structure (Foster, 1973). Physically, the capillary number represents the
ratio of viscous to capillary forces. The capillary number for an ordinary waterooding
process is in the order of 10
6
(Foster, 1973).
Evaluation of the Chemical Methods in EOR Activities
As far as surface properties are concerned, oil extraction activities are greatly opti-
mized by EOR methods that employ some applicable chemical technique, especially
after secondary methods have failed to improve reservoir productivity. Some of these
techniques are cited in Figure 1, with particular emphasis on alkalinesurfactantpolymer
(ASP) methods. Lowering of the wateroil IFT is the main driving force that enables
the use of such methods. Changes in uid viscosities upon addition of chemicals like
polymer mixtures are observed and present some advantages. In conventional oil recovery
activities via waterooding, low yields are normally observed. This is because of high
oil viscosity and development of strong IFTs when water is injected, in addition to
geological aspects involved in the oil extraction process. The phase behavior of a brine
oilsurfactant formulation is one of the key factors determining enhanced oil recovery by
surfactant ooding. Therefore, operations based on either surfactants or polymers or their
combination, adsorption phenomena can be potentially advantageous mainly because of
the interesting physicochemical properties of micellar solutions, emulsions, fracturing
uids, and particularly microemulsions.
Surfactant and polymer ooding has become an effective and competitive process
to improve oil recovery under the current circumstances of high oil prices. Thus, oil
companies are considering the process more seriously to rejuvenate their mature elds
(Chang et al., 2006). The special ability of surfactant molecules to adsorb onto surfaces
and modify their properties, and their further interaction with polymers and other chemical
species, requires assessing many physical parameters. The heterogeneous geological
nature of the oil reservoir must always be considered when selecting a suitable chemical
system in oil recovery. Different surfactant or polymer molecules or the appropriate
combination of two can serve this purpose to recover maximum oil yield. Compatibility
among the different tested species in terms of chain length, hydrophilic-lipophilic balance
(HLB), and chemical nature, for example, is one aspect to devise a chemical recovery
system (Hankins and Harwell, 1997; Shiao et al., 1998; Austad and Standnes, 2003).
Furthermore, very extreme conditions established by varying pH, temperature, pressure,
and composition (salt and inorganic compounds) are encountered in the reservoirs; thus,
novel surfactants in EOR activities must support such conditions and interact favorably
with other chemicals.
Biodegradability during the oil recovery process is also desirable, as in alkylpolyglu-
cosides and pyrolidones (Iglauer et al., 2004; Somasundaran and Zhang, 2006). Scattering
techniques, surface tension measurements, and particularly calorimetric experiments can
be successfully carried out, providing valuable properties about the interaction between
surfactants and polymers when mixed together under specic conditions in EOR tech-
niques (Loh et al., 2004). Reports by Loh and coworkers provide further explanation of
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1358 M. F. Nazar et al.
such techniques and analyses of some experimental results with chemicals that can have
potential applications in EOR (L. H. M. da Silva and Loh, 2000; R. C. da Silva et al.,
2002, 2004; Lof et al., 2007; Niemiec and Loh, 2008).
Enhanced Oil Recovery by Means of Microemulsions
Microemulsions are also potential candidates in enhanced oil recovery, especially due
to the ultra-low interfacial tension values attained between the contacting oil and water
microphases that compose them. Microemulsion ooding can be applied over a wide
range of reservoir conditions (Poettman, 1974). The use of microemulsions for oil
recovery is not a recent development in petroleum technology. In 1959, Holm and
Bernard led for a patent in which surfactant dissolved in low-viscosity hydrocarbon
solvent was proposed. Another patent was led by Gogarty and Olson in 1962 that
described the use of microemulsions in a new miscible-type recovery process known as
Maraood
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4
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Sassen, C. L., Filemon, L. M., de Loos, Th., and de Swan Arons, J. (1989b). Inuence of pressure
and electrolyte on the phase behaviour of water-oil-nonionic surfactant systems. J. Phys. Chem.
93:6511.
Schramm, L. L. (1992). Emulsions: Fundamentals and Applications in the Petroleum Industry.
Washington, DC: American Chemical Society.
Schramm, L. L. (2000). Surfactants: Fundamentals and Applications in the Petroleum Industry.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Schramm, L. L., Stasiuk, E. N., and Marangoni, D. G. (2003). Surfactants and their applications.
Annu. Rep. Progr. Chem. 99:348.
Shah, D. O. (1985). Macro- and Microemulsions (Theory and Applications). Washington, DC:
American Chemical Society.
Shiao, S. Y., Chhabra, V., Patist, A., Free, M. L., Huibers, P. D. T., Gregory, A., Patel, S., and Shah,
D. O. (1998). Chain length compatibility effects in mixed surfactant systems for technological
applications. Adv. Colloid Interface Sci. 74:129.
Somasundaran, P., and Zhang, L. (2006). Adsorption of surfactants on minerals for wettability
control in improved oil recovery processes. J. Petrol. Sci. Eng. 52:198212.
Standing, T. (2007). Where EOR Succeeds and Where it Does Not: Big Thermal EOR in California,
But Where Else? Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas.
Tabsr, J. J. (1969). Dynamic and static forces required to remove a discontinuous oil phase from
porous media containing both oil and water. SPE. J. 9:3.
Trushenski, S. P., Dauben, D. L., and Parrish, D. R. (1973). Micellar oodinguid propagation,
interaction and mobility. Paper No. SPE 4582, SPE Annual Fall Meeting, Las Vegas, NV.
Wasan, D. T., Ginn, M. E., and Shah, D. O. (1988). Surfactants in Chemical Process Engineering.
New York: Marcel Dekker.
Yangming, Z., Huanxin, W., and Zulin, C. (2003). Compositional modication of crude oil during
oil recovery. J. Petrol. Sci. Eng. 38:111.
Zhang, R., and Somasundaran, P. (2006). Advances in adsorption of surfactants and their mixtures
at solid/solution interfaces. Adv. Colloid Interface Sci. 123126:213229.
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