(390h) Effect of Minerals on Static Adsorption of a Novel Gemini Surfactant

Adsorption of surfactant on rocks causes a detrimental effect on the efficiency and economics of a chemical enhanced oil recovery (cEOR) process. Generally, rocks contain some minerals such as, quartz, calcite, dolomite, montmorillonite, kaolinite, feldspar, and so on. A comprehensive understanding of the adsorption mechanism is required with respect to minerals. The static adsorption of a novel cationic gemini surfactant on different minerals has been investigated in this paper.

Static adsorption was determined using the concentration difference between pre and post adsorption experiments. High performance liquid chromatography along with evaporative light scattering detector was utilized to quantify the surfactant adsorption. Different classes of minerals were tested. It was found that clay minerals cause a huge detrimental effect on chemical EOR process while using cationic surfactant. There is a need to find a strategy to tackle the effect of clay minerals in cEOR. This paper reports the effect of minerals on static adsorption of a novel cationic gemini surfactant based on real experimental data.