Surfactant flooding is a promising enhanced oil recovery technique since the presence of surfactant could reduce the interfacial tension between oil and water phases and alter the wettability of the reservoir rock.
As it become more attractive due to advances in oil and other chemical production which ensures meeting the long term world’s energy demand, the requirement of a reliable and comprehensive surfactant flooding model increases.
Considering that proper choosing or narrow-down selection of surfactants is essential for different surfactant flooding systems to result in improved oil recovery, this project is aimed at investigating what kind of models or modelling approach are best for simulating the surfactant flooding systems and to develop a user friendly expert tool for predicting interfacial tension of surfactant containing systems in a long term.
Since interfacial tension reduction is one of the most important factors during surfactant selection, the experimental data about interfacial tension and phase equilibria of various surfactants using in different systems are collected from the literature. And calculated results of various models, including eCPA, ePC-SAFT and ACM et al., are systematically compared by validating with experimental data from the literature.
Furthermore, obtained models are used as a prototype tool for predicting interfacial tension of the surfactant flooding system. The results and implications will be discussed and presented in future reports.
Co- supervisors:
Nicolas von Solms and Alexander Shapiro