Partition Coefficient of Surfactantpolymer in Oil and Water Phases for Improved Oil Production

Summary Understanding of the behavior of the amphiphilic chemicals at oil/water interface has aroused great interests to improve the economics of surfactant mediated oil production technique. This work experimentally investigated the partition of various surfactants and a surfactant-polymer formulation at 95°C between oil and water phases under different salinities. The results show the logarithm of surfactants partition coefficient lnK is linearly related to the logarithm of salinity lnS for anionic surfactant and salinity S for non-ionic surfactant respectively. This is consistent to hydrophobic lipophilic deviation (HLD) model. The presence of polymer prevents the partition of non-anionic surfactant from water phase to oil phase.