Sharif Digital Repository

A newly-designed surfactant was formulated to tolerate the harsh conditions of oil reservoirs, including high salinity of the formation brine and temperature. The specific emulsion and interfacial tension (IFT) behavior of this new surface active agent were investigated by performing emulsion stability tests, emulsion size analysis, and IFT behavior in the presence of four different types of alkalis. Image processing was utilized to analyze the droplet size distribution using microscopic images of the samples. The results show that depending on the composition of the mixtures, the optimum phase region and interfacial tension behavior change considerably. Solutions containing a higher... 

A fundamental chemical enhanced oil recovery (EOR) process is surfactant flooding in which the key mechanism is to reduce interfacial tension between oil and the displacing fluid and hence mobilizing the trapped oil. Surfactant loss by adsorption is one of the most important criteria that governs the economics of the surfactant flooding methods. In addition to this, detrimental effects and high price of currently used surfactants cause EOR process so expensive and unfeasible. This study is aimed to introduce a novel kind of plant based surfactant which is extracted from Zizyphus Spina-Christi tree. In addition, equilibrium adsorption behavior of this novel biosurfactant in aqueous solution... 

Alkaline-Surfactant-Polymer flooding is one of the most novel chemical enhanced oil recovery methods in the petroleum industry. This method has attracted interest due to its remarkable advantages. In this work, a series of ASP floods are conducted on fractured/non-fractured carbonate rocks. The performance of the tests was investigated by various ASP floods consisting of five types of polymers, two surfactants and one common alkaline. ASP was flooded simultaneously and sequentially in four defined scenarios after water flooding. The results showed that although using hydrolysed polymers increases the recovery factor in the fractured medium, sulfonated polymers increase oil recovery even more...