Locally Produced Sustainable and Resilient Surfactants for Enhanced Oil Recovery

Abstract

Abstract The chemical flooding is one of the major enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods for recovering residual oil within the pores of rock. However, the injected chemical such as surfactant must be soluble in low and high salinity brine, compatible with reservoir ions, and stable at elevated temperatures. The main objective of this study is to explore the potential of locally produced surfactants for EOR in high temperature and high salinity reservoir environments. The design and synthesis of new surfactants were done using green or no solvents. In addition, the cleavable moieties were introduced in the chemical structure of the surfactants including amide bond which is known to exhibit less toxicity and excellent biodegradability. NMR (1H and 13C) and FT-IR techniques were used to confirm the chemical structure. The developed surfactants exhibited excellent solubility in high and low salinity water and no precipitation, phase separation, or cloudiness was observed. The structure characterization methods were matched with the projected structure of surfactants. Moreover, the visual observation revealed no degradation in the chemical structure of surfactants even after leaving the sample over some time. The locally produced sustainable and resilient surfactants displayed excellent physicochemical properties and were found to be soluble in low to high salinity brine as well as stable over a long period. These properties showed great potential for applying these surfactants in high temperature and high-salinity carbonate reservoirs.