Effect of Environment-Friendly Non-Ionic Surfactant on Interfacial Tension Reduction and Wettability Alteration; Implications for Enhanced Oil Recovery

Abstract

Production from mature oil reservoirs can be optimized by using the surfactant flooding technique. This can be achieved by reducing oil and water interfacial tension (IFT) and modifying wettability to hydrophilic conditions. In this study, a novel green non-ionic surfactant (dodecanoyl-glucosamine surfactant) was synthesized and used to modify the wettability of carbonate reservoirs to hydrophilic conditions as well as to decrease the IFT of hydrophobic oil–water systems. The synthesized non-ionic surfactant was characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and chemical shift nuclear magnetic resonance (HNMR) analyses. Further pH, turbidity, density, and conductivity were investigated to measure the critical micelle concentration (CMC) of surfactant solutions. The result shows that this surfactant alters wettability from 148.93° to 65.54° and IFT from 30 to 14 dynes/cm. Core-flooding results have shown that oil recovery was increased from 40% (by water flooding) to 59% (by surfactant flooding). In addition, it is identified that this novel non-ionic surfactant can be used in CO2 storage applications due to its ability to alter the hydrophobicity into hydrophilicity of the reservoir rocks.