The Continuous Analysis of Surfactant Concentrations in Coreflood Experiments

Abstract

One of the major problems in designing an effective tertiary oil recovery process is minimizing the adsorption activity of the surfactant. Information concerning the adsorption behavior of specific surfactants would be very useful, but very little data of this nature is available because the detection methods implemented are either too specific or too time consuming. A noncontinuous detection scheme involving the electrochemical method of polarography has proven to be effective at Texas A & M University, but actual coreflood experiments require a continuous detection scheme. The purpose of this investigation was to develop a continuous detection scheme for the analysis of surfactant concentrations in coreflood experiments. Calibration curves obtained by implementation of the continuous detection scheme indicated that the surfactant concentration varied linearly with the peak current at the detector. A scheme for the determination of equilibrium adsorption effects in the core sample was developed, but experimental problems prevented the collection of data. A computational outline was developed that allows the adsorption effects in a core sample to be determined from polarographic data alone.