Desorption of hydrocarbon chains by association with ionic and nonionic surfactants under flow as a mechanism for enhanced oil recovery.

ABSTRACT: The need to extract oil from wells where it is embedded on the surfaces of rocks has led to the development of new and improved enhanced oil recovery techniques. One of those is the injection of surfactants with water vapor, which promotes desorption of oil that can then be extracted using pumps, as the surfactants encapsulate the oil in foams. However, the mechanisms that lead to the optimal desorption of oil and the best type of surfactants to carry out desorption are not well known yet, which warrants the need to carry out basic research on this topic. In this work, we report non equilibrium dissipative particle dynamics simulations of model surfactants and oil molecules adsorbed on surfaces, with the purpose of studying the efficiency of the surfactants to desorb hydrocarbon chains, th

SUBMITTER: Terron-Mejia KA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5575256 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature