Surfactant formulations consisting of surfactant, alkali, polymer, and electrolyte have been developed using well defined screening processes established through experimentation in labs around the world. Due to recent advances in chemical enhanced oil recovery, surfactants can be used to extend the life of mature reservoirs with increasingly diverse conditions. High temperatures, complex geochemistry, or high clay content can provide significant challenges when developing formulations for chemical flooding. Through careful selection and screening of surfactants and chemicals, oil recovery of greater than 90% can be achieved in laboratory corefloods despite these difficulties. The objective of this research was to determine the ideal surfactant formulation using a sulfate surfactant for a reservoir with high clay content at 85 ºC. Advances in our laboratory have shown sulfate surfactants to be stable under specific conditions at elevated temperature. In addition, new methods of synthesizing surfactants have yielded a vast array of structures and iterations of novel surfactants to test for EOR applicability. Experiments contained within include surfactant screening both with and without the presence of crude oil and evaluation of polymer and microemulsion viscosity. From these results, a series of corefloods were performed in Berea and reservoir corefloods that yielded oil recovery of 90% and above with low surfactant retention. / text

Monte Carlo simulations have been used in the past to investigate a variety of surfactant systems; however, there is little published literature for double-headed and gemini surfactants with asymmetric tails. We perform Larson-type Monte Carlo simulations of double-headed and gemini surfactant systems with asymmetric tails in two- and three-dimensions. The model predicts that the addition of a second head group to form a double-headed surfactant results in an increase in the critical micelle concentration (CMC) compared to a single-headed surfactant, in agreement with experiment. It also indicates that the placement of the second head group has an impact on the final CMC value. We study a series of gemini surfactants with asymmetric tails and find no change in the value of the CMC as the ratio of the lengths of the two tails increases. This is contrary to the only experimental study that found there was a slight decrease in the CMC as the ratio of the lengths of the two tails increases. We examine this difference in terms of the relatively small effect surfactant asymmetry has on value of the CMC and the fact that the model is capable of qualitatively reproducing the known dependence of the CMC on other architectural properties. This initial probe into systems of double-headed and gemini surfactants with asymmetric tails confirms many of the previously published findings and provides avenues for possible future research using Monte Carlo simulations.

The interfacial properties of a surfactant in a CO₂-aqueous system at a temperature above 100 °C, and how they influence foams are essentially unknown. A cationic surfactant, C₁₂₋₁₄N(EO)₂ in the protonated state below pH 5.5, was demonstrated to be soluble in an aqueous phase with up to 22% total dissolved salt (TDS) at 120 °C. Moreover, the strong solvation in brine (high cloud point) and simultaneous affinity for CO₂ led to significant adsorption of the surfactant at the CO₂-water interface. Given that the surfactant favored the brine phase over the CO₂ phase, the preferred curvature was a CO₂-in-water (C/W) macroemulsion (foam). The surfactant stabilized foam in the presence of crushed calcium carbonate at ~ pH 4 upon suppressing the dissolution of calcium carbonate upon addition of Ca²⁺ and Mg²⁺ according to the common ion effect. Cationic alkyltrimethylammonium surfactants with an alkyl tail of average carbon number less than 15 were soluble in 22% TDS brine up to 120 oC. The head group was properly balanced with a C₁₂₋₁₄ hydrocarbon tail for a sufficiently dense surfactant layer at the CO₂-water interface to reduce the interfacial tension. For C₁₂₋₁₄N(CH₃)₃Cl the solubility in brine and the surfactant adsorption were sufficient to stabilize C/W foam at 120 °C in both a crushed calcium carbonate packed bed (76 Darcy) and a capillary tube at the downstream of the bed. The stability of the foam at high temperature may be attributed to the high surfactant adsorption at the interface. The use of nonionic surfactants as a foam stabilizer is usually limited by their poor aqueous solubility at elevated temperatures, particularly at high salinity. A nonionic surfactant C₁₂₋₁₄(EO)₂₂ with high degree of ethoxylation gave higher salt tolerance at elevated temperature. The surfactant stabilize C/W foam at 80 °C in the presence of 90 g/L NaCl brine in a 30 Darcy sand pack, which has not yet been reported by a nonionic surfactant. Both the formation of strong foam in the porous media and the low of oil-brine partition coefficient suggest C₁₂₋₁₄(EO)₂₂ is a potential candidate for a CO₂ EOR field trial. / text

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The presence of cholesterol is critical in defining a dynamic lateral structure in pulmonary surfactant membranes, including the segregation of fluid-ordered and fluid-disordered phases. However, an excess of cholesterol has been associated with impaired surface activity both in surfactant models and in surfactant from injured lungs. It has also been reported that surfactant protein SP-C interacts with cholesterol in lipid/protein interfacial films. In the present study, we have analyzed the effect of SP-C on the thermodynamic properties of phospholipid membranes containing cholesterol and on the ability of lipid/protein complexes containing surfactant proteins and cholesterol to form and re-spread interfacial films capable of producing very low surface tensions upon repetitive compression-expansion cycling. We have also analyzed the effect of cholesterol on the structure, orientation and dynamic properties of SP-C embedded in physiologically relevant model membranes.

Colloidal macroions are known to interact very strongly with oppositely charged polyionic hydrogels. Sometimes this results in a non-uniform distribution of the macroions within the gel, a phenomenon that is not fully understood. This thesis is a summary of four papers on the development of a theory of the thermodynamics of macroions interacting with hydrogels, aimed at explaining the phenomenon of core/shell separation in spherical gels. It is the first theory of such interactions to use a rigorous approach to whole-gel mechanics, in which the elastic interplay between different parts of the gel is treated explicitly. The thesis shows that conventional theories of elasticity, earlier used on gels in pure solvent, can be generalised to apply also to gels in complex fluids, and that the general features of the phase behaviour are the same if mapped to corresponding system variables. It is found that the emergence of shells is due to attractions between macroions in the gel, mediated by polyions. Since the shell state is unfavourable from the perspective of the shell itself, being deformed from its preferred state, there will be a hysteresis between the uptake and the release of the macroion, like already known to occur with the uptake and release of pure solvent. Due to the elastic interplay, growth of the shell makes further growth progressively more favourable. Thus, unless there is a limited amount of macroions available the system will not reach equilibrium until complete phase transition has taken place. If the amount is limited the core/shell separation can be in equilibrium, so the volume of the solution that the gel is in contact with plays a very important part in determining the thermodynamic resting point of the system. The ability of a macroion/hydrogel to phase separate thus depends on the molecular properties whereas the ultimate fate of such a separation depends on the proportions in number between the ingoing components.

Steam injection with added surface active chemicals is one of general EOR processes aimed to recover residual oil after primary production processes. It has been demonstrated that, after waterflooding, an oil swept area can be increased by steam surfactant flow due to the reduced steam override effect as well as reduced interfacial tension between oil and water in the formation. To investigate the ability to improve recovery of 20.5oAPI California heavy oil with steam surfactant injection, several experiments with a one-dimensional model were performed. Two experimental models with similar porous media, fluids, chemicals, as well as injection and production conditions, were applied. The first series of experiments were carried out in a vertical cylindrical injection cell with dimensions of 7.4 cm x 67 cm. The second part of experiment was conducted using a horizontal tube model with dimensions of 3.5 cm x 110.5 cm. The horizontal model with a smaller diameter than the vertical injection cell is less subject to channel formation and is therefore more applicable for the laboratory scale modeling of the one-dimensional steam injection process. Nonionic surfactant Triton X-100 was coinjected into the steam flow. For both series of experimental work with vertical and horizontal injection cells, the concentration of Triton X-100 surfactant solution used was chosen 3.0 wt%. The injection rates were set to inject the same 0.8 pore volumes of steam for the vertical model and 1.8 pore volumes of steam for horizontal model. The steam was injected at superheated conditions of 200oC and pressure of 100 psig. The liquid produced from the separator was sampled periodically and treated to determine oilcut and produced oil properties. The interfacial tension (IFT) of the produced oil and water were measured with an IFT meter and compared to that for the original oil. The experimental study demonstrated that the average incremental oil recovery with steam surfactant flood is 7 % of the original oil-in-place above that with pure steam injection.