Interfacial Tension Behavior and Oil Recovery Efficiency of Ionic Liquid As Surfactant

Depletion and high demand of crude oil had inspired the oil producers to explore other efficient enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods. This enhancement process is the tertiary recovery method applied even after primary and secondary recovery methods take placed. By conducting this enhancement process, the extraction of oil will increase. However, exploration and further exploitation of old oil reservoirs become one of the most challenging activities in the petroleum industry. Surfactants are well known in the literature which plays the role in improving oil recovery that will affect the EOR performance. They affect the performance by reducing the interfacial tension (IFT) between water and oil besides changing the matrix wettability from mixed or oil wet to water wet and to reduce the capillary pressure thus allow the residual oil to flow. However, in term of surfactant itself, there are some factors which have impact on it. Temperature, salinity, concentration of surfactant is a few example of the parameter that should be taken into account. The effects of each parameter are investigated in most of the studies. In this study, various concentration of different ionic liquid based surfactant will be used as new candidate in order to measure the IFT. Based on the experiment, the other critical parameter of surfactant behaviour can be determined. The critical micelle concentration (CMC) is known as surfactant concentration in the large amount at which formation of micelle started. Although concentration of surfactants increased however it will not affect the IFT anymore that means the value of IFT cannot be reduced. Therefore, from the graph of ionic liquid concentration versus interfacial tension, the capability of surfactant to reduce the surface tension can be proven.