Sharif Digital Repository

Solvatochromic UV-vis shifts of three probes 4-nitroaniline, 4-nitroanisol, and Reichardt's dye in binary mixtures of polyethylene glycol p-(1,1,3,3-tetramethylbutyl)-phenyl ether (Triton X-100 or TX-100) with methanol, ethanol, 1-propanol, and water have been investigated at 298 K. Structural and intermolecular interactions of solvatochromic probes were determined in these systems. Solvatochromic parameters, including normalized polarity (ETN), dipolarity-polarizability (π∗), hydrogen-bond donor (α), and hydrogen-bond acceptor (β) abilities, were measured at a wide range of mole fraction (0 ≤ X ≤ 1) with 0.1 increment. Interestingly, a similar behavior of ETN and α is observed in... 

In this work, a newly formulated sulfonate-based surfactant and two other commercial sulfate-based surfactants with the capability of tolerating harsh underground reservoir conditions, such as high-saline formation water and high temperature, were prepared. Sodium metaborate as an effective alkali compound was also used to provide alkali-surfactant combination. Interfacial tension (IFT) measurements as well as wettability examinations for different salinities and mixture conditions were performed for an extended range of the chemical concentrations. The wettability tests including both contact angle measurements and Amott cell tests were performed on saturated Berea sandstone plug samples... 

The modification of the surface wetting characteristics in fractured oil-wet carbonate reservoirs, by reversing wettability from oil-wet to water-wet, leads to improved oil recovery. However, in order to obtain a successful oil recovery process, it is crucial to understand the active mechanisms of wettability alteration. This study looks at the effect of sulfate ions as one of the most promising wettability influencing ions on the wetting properties of oil-wet calcite; the effect is studied both with and without the presence of cationic surfactant and possible mechanisms of wettability alteration are explored. A number of analytical techniques were utilized to analyze the mineral surface... 

Scalable coating methods have recently emerged as practical alternative deposition techniques to the conventional spin-coating despite their lower yielding power conversion efficiencies (PCEs). The most important barrier acting against the use of scalable deposition methods to get a highly absorbing (>95%) film with controlled morphology in the high crystallinity of perovskite particles is the impossibility of antisolvent dripping during the deposition. Here, we demonstrate the positive role of both the surfactant-engineering and the vacuum-annealing (<100 Pa) process in improving the device performance to overcome this limit. A detailed optimization of the vacuum-assisted meniscus printing... 

Pulsating heat pipes are cooling devices that are partially filled with working fluid. Working fluid thermophysical properties affect the thermal performance of pulsating heat pipes. In this research, the effect of adding a Triton X-100 surfactant to pure water and using the mixture as a working fluid is investigated experimentally. The results indicate that adding surfactant leads to improvement in the thermal performance of the pulsating heat pipe. In particular, the maximum of the thermal resistance improvement is about 61%, which is attributed to 0.01% surfactant concentration. Higher heat transfer ability is attributed to lower surface tension and the contact angle of the mixture... 

Plenty of oil reservoirs contain discontinuous shale layers that act as flow barriers. Therefore, understanding their influences on reservoir performance, especially during enhanced oil recovery (EOR) processes, is of great importance. For this purpose, several experiments of water and alkaline-surfactant-polymer (ASP) flooding have been performed on a number of one-quarter five-spot micromodels that contain various configurations of shale layers to simulate shaly porous media. Several features, such as various shale geometrical characteristics and the presence of connate water saturation, were investigated at both macro- and micro-scales. The presence of shales resulted in earlier... 

In the present study, the effect of two different kinds of surfactants namely conventional (Sodium dodecyl benzene sulfonate (SDBS)) and ionic liquid (IL)-based surfactants are investigated on the tertiary oil recovery using relative permeability concept. In this way, besides the Amott wettability index measurement, unsteady state core flooding tests are performed to not only find the effect of surfactant injection on tertiary oil recovery, but also to investigate their effects on relative permeability of carbonate rocks. In addition, for more reliable conclusions regarding the possible mechanisms, interfacial tension (IFT), compatibility and emulsification tests are carried out as a... 

Alkalis, surfactants and/or polymers are usually injected in the injector wells so that the injection fluids can sweep through the reservoir and mobilize/recover more oil. However, the formation of stable emulsion due to the residual chemicals in the recovered crude oil poses problems in the primary separation process. This study focuses on the effect of Alkali-Surfactant-Polymer injection on creaming and coalescence of crude oil and water emulsion produced in the primary gravity separator. In addition, a model is developed in this work to predict the separation effectiveness of oil and water emulsion containing ASP. In this work, the effect of ASP on the stability and the separation of... 

Alkalis, surfactants and/or polymers are usually injected in the injector wells so that the injection fluids can sweep through the reservoir and mobilize/recover more oil. However, the formation of stable emulsion due to the residual chemicals in the recovered crude oil poses problems in the primary separation process. This study focuses on the effect of Alkali-Surfactant-Polymer injection on creaming and coalescence of crude oil and water emulsion produced in the primary gravity separator. In addition, a model is developed in this work to predict the separation effectiveness of oil and water emulsion containing ASP. In this work, the effect of ASP on the stability and the separation of... 

In the present study, an aqueous root-extract of Acanthophyllum laxiusculum (AREAL) was evaluated for phenanthrene removal from two samples of contaminated soil. AREAL showed a linear solubilization enhancement for phenanthrene with a weight solubilization ratio of 0.05. Batch soil washing experiments caused the removal of phenanthrene with efficiencies of 96.7% and 78% from soils with 0.78% and 2.73% organic carbon, respectively. Desorption kinetics of phenanthrene exhibited a twophase pattern, namely, a rapid release as the initial phase and a slower removal as a subsequent phase. A two-compartment exponential model could adequately represent the two phases of the kinetic pattern of... 

Understanding the roles of asphaltene and resin as natural surfactants existed in crude oil can enlighten contradicting reported results regarding interfacial tension (IFT) of crude oil/aqueous solution as a function of salinity and ion type. In this way, this study is aimed to investigate the effect of these natural surface active agents on IFT of with special focus on SO42− anion and Mg2+ cation. Two different synthetic oil solutions of 8 wt% of the extracted asphaltene and resin dissolved in toluene are prepared, and then IFT values are measured. After that, the obtained results are compared with the IFT of intact crude oil in contact with the same saline solutions examined in the... 

A highly sensitive and simple indirect spectrophotometric method has been developed for the determination of trace amounts of inorganic mercury (Hg2 +) in aqueous media. The method is based on the inhibitory effect of Hg2 + on the activity of horseradish peroxidase (HRP) in the oxidation of ascorbic acid by hydrogen peroxide followed by the reduction of Au3 + to Au-NPs by unreacted ascorbic acid and the measurement of the absorbance of localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) peak of gold nanoparticles (at 530 nm) which is directly proportional to the concentration of Hg2 +. Under the optimum conditions, the calibration curve was linear in the concentration range of 1-220 ng mL- 1. Limits... 

Over 60% of the world's discovered oil reserves are held in carbonate reservoirs, which are mostly naturally fractured. Conventional water flooding results in low oil recovery efficiency in these reservoirs as most of them are oil-wet. On account of negative capillary forces, injected brine cannot penetrate simply into an oil-wet matrix of fractured formations to force the oil out. Wettability alteration of the rock surface to preferentially more water-wet state has been extensively studied using both smart water and surfactants separately. This study aims to study the effects of Mg2+ as one of the most important wettability influencing ions on the wetting properties of oil-wet carbonate... 

Fungal delignification can be considered as a feasible process to pre-treat lignocellulosic biomass in biofuel production, if its performance is improved in terms of efficiency thorough a few modifications. In this study, Trichoderma viride was utilized to investigate the effect of wet-milling, addition of surfactant (Tween 80) and optimization of operating factors such as temperature, biomass to liquid medium ratio and glucose concentration on biodelignification of rice straw. Next, the enzymatic hydrolysis of pretreated biomass was studied at various pretreatment times. Results revealed that the wet milling and addition of surfactant increases the lignin removal about 15% and 11%,... 

Colloidal Gas Aphron (CGA) are finding increasing application in fields of science and engineering because of their distinctive characteristic. As interest in the application of CGA based fluids grows and in order to select the best procedure for using them in successful petroleum engineering operations, there is a need to gain a better understanding of the factors that affect their properties and behavior. This article discusses the rheological characterization, stability analysis and filtration properties of CGA based fluids for three bio-polymers and two ionic surfactant. The stability and filtration analysis were investigated with the static drain rate technique and API filtration tests,... 

On the surface of bubbles rising in a surfactant solution the adsorption process proceeds and leads to the formation of a so called Rear Stagnant Cap (RSC). The larger this RSC is the stronger is the retardation of the rising velocity. The theory of a steady RSC and steady retarded rising velocity, which sets in after a transient stage, has been generally accepted. However, a non-steady process of bubble rising starting from the initial zero velocity represents an important portion of the trajectory of rising, characterized by a local velocity profile (LVP). As there is no theory of RSC growth for large Reynolds numbers Re « 1 so far, the interpretation of LVPs measured in this regime was... 

This work aims to discuss the results of wide ranges of laboratory investigations to evaluate the performance of a newly-formulated surfactant for heavy oil reservoirs in order to improve the microscopic sweep efficiency after water flooding processes. In the first part, the specific behavior of the formulated surfactant including its salinity tolerance, interfacial tension, and optimum performance window was determined. Then, the application of surfactant solutions in real sandstone reservoir rocks was assessed for both oil-wet and water-wet cases. Besides, the effect of changing the capillary and viscous forces and interfacial tension on the residual phase saturations were characterized.... 

Biosurfactant production from two indigenous consortia has already been investigated in two previous studies. In this study, comparison and modification of those models for having as much biosurfactant as possible was conducted. After characterization of bacteria by biochemical tests and 16S ribotyping, a fully modification on the final models was presented. Response surface methodology has the ability to investigate the liability of the parameters and models by the help of Desirability mode and R2 coefficient in Design Expert software. Our models in the previous works follow the style of (y=f(A,B,. . .)) and two Desirability of 0.968 and 0.996 for Paenibacillus alvei ARN63 and Bacillus... 

In spite of the high level in the theory of steady rear stagnant caps (RSC) and its influence on steady rising, its practical application is mostly impossible because the coefficients for the adsorption and desorption rates are separately unknown. The determination of ka and kd separately is an actual task for the adsorption dynamics as whole. While steady RSC and steady rising retardation by surfactants are described in literature in details, only few papers are devoted to the modeling of the decelerated rising. Moreover, steady rising depends on the ratio ka/kd and its investigation is not helpful for the determination of kd. In contrast a possibility to determine kd (or ka independently)... 

A large amount of the discovered oil reserves are reserved in carbonate formations, which are mostly naturally fractured oil-wet. Wettability alteration towards more water-wet state reduces the capillary barrier, hence improving the oil recovery efficiency in such reservoirs. In this study, wettability alteration towards favorable wetting state was investigated by combining modified low salinity brine with surfactant during water flooding. The diluted brine was modified by increasing the concentration of Mg2+ and SO4 2−, individually as well as both ions in combination. Different brine formulations were tested experimentally through the observations of contact angle measurements and...