Interfacial tension of crude oil-water system with imidazolium and lactam-based ionic liquids and their evaluation for enhanced oil recovery under high saline environment

• Published in: Fuel (Guildford) Vol. 191; pp. 239 - 250
• Main Authors: Sakthivel, Sivabalan, Velusamy, Sugirtha, Nair, Vishnu Chandrasekharan, Sharma, Tushar, Sangwai, Jitendra S.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kidlington Elsevier Ltd 01.03.2017; Elsevier BV
• Subjects: Amides; Chemical agents; Crude oil; Enhanced oil recovery; Evaluation; Flooding; High salinity; High temperature; Interfacial tension; Ionic liquids; Oil recovery; Polymers; Porous media; Reservoirs; Saline environments; Salinity; Sodium; Sodium dodecyl sulfate; Sodium lauryl sulfate; Surface tension; Tension; Ionic liquids; High salinity; Enhanced oil recovery; Flooding; Crude oil; Interfacial tension
• ISSN: 0016-2361; 1873-7153
• DOI: 10.1016/j.fuel.2016.11.064

Cumulative oil recovery, water cut and pressure drop as a function of fluids injected. Comparative efficiency of the IL ([CP]+[C6H13COO]−) in individual systems comprising the only polymer, only SDS/IL, SDS/IL+polymer, SDS/IL+100,000ppm+polymer. [Display omitted] •ILs were employed for IFT and EOR experiments at zero and high saline condition.•IL+polymer solution improved the oil recovery up to 31% in high saline condition.•Longer the chain length of IL, higher is the recovery and lower is the IFT.•IL flooding proved to be efficient than the conventional surfactant. Matured reservoirs are being targeted for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) operations in the hope to recover the residual oil that remains trapped within the porous media. Chemical enhanced oil recovery is one of the successful oil recovery methods which is being employed for the recovery of the residual oil. Many of the conventional chemicals fail to perform under high temperature and high saline reservoir conditions. These situations lead to the search for alternate flooding techniques which could efficiently produce the crude oil to the surface. The present work investigates a possible solution for the recovery of trapped crude oil using lactam and imidazolium based ionic liquids (ILs) specifically targeted towards recovery in high saline environment. Initially, the interfacial tension of the crude oil-water system has been investigated using various chemical agents, such as sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), and six different ILs at varying high saline concentrations as a function of temperature (283.15–353.15K). Subsequently, flooding experiments with only polymer, only SDS, only IL, SDS+polymer and IL+polymer at zero and high saline conditions were performed. It was observed that the IL+polymer flood performed very well in both zero and high salinity conditions as compared to all other flooding systems. The present investigation also portrays an intuition on the evaluation of ILs based on their alkyl chain length.