Abstract:

Part 1：The majority of oil is often trapped in narrow pores in the oil reservoir and water flooding alone only mobilizes a fraction of the oil in place. One way to increase the percentage of recovered oil is to add a surfactant or a surfactant mixture that reduces the oil-water interfacial tension to very low values. Calculations have shown that the interfacial tension between the reservoir oil and the water used for flooding must be reduced to 10^-3 mN/m or even lower. This can only be achieved through a spontaneous formation of a microemulsion phase between the oil and the water. The internal structure of the microemulsion is important. It is only when the microemulsion is bicontinuous, i.e. consisting of infinitely long domains of oil and water extending over macroscopic distances, that the ultralow interfacial tension is obtained.

It is shown in the lecture how the interfacial tension values are affected by the phase behavior of the ternary system oil, water and surfactant. It is also shown how the phase behavior can be affected in a positive way by addition of a small amount of an amphiphilic polymer. Finally, it is demonstrated that a combination of two anionic surfactants, one sulfate and one sulfonate, can give a very favorable phase behavior with the oil from the Daqing oil field. With this formulation a total oil recovery of 89 % was obtained in core flooding experiments using oil-filled cores from the Daqing oil field.

Part 2: He will give a short talk about the 2018 Noble Prize in Chemistry in which he discuss the procedure and a little bit about the chemistry behind this year's prizes.