Comparison Studies of Surfactant Behavior in Light/Medium Oil

Depletion and high demand of crude oil had inspired the oil companies to explore other efficient enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods. This enhancement process is the tertiary recovery method applied even after primary and secondary methods take placed. By conducting this enhancement process, the extraction of oil will increase. However, exploration and further exploitation of residual oil saturation 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 improve the recovery by reducing the interfacial tension (IFT) between water and oil besides changing the matrix wettability from intermediate or oil wet to water wet and 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 should be taken into account. However due to time constraint, this study will focus only on salinity and concentration variation on the performance of the new ionic liquid based surfactant. The range of parameters and variables will be based on the laboratory study. The critical micelle concentration (CMC) is known as surfactant concentration in the large amount at which formation of micelle started. Therefore, from the graph of ionic liquid concentration versus interfacial tension, the ability of the new candidate as good surfactant to reduce IFT can be proven as well as the lowest concentration applicable. Additionally, the studies also include the existing anionic surfactant comparison.