Ahmed M Elmuzafar, Sultan Abdullah S, Mahmoud Mohamed, Singh Kamaljit, Kamal Muhammad Shahzad, Patil Shirish, Kanj Mazen
Petroleum Engineering Department, College of Petroleum Engineering and Geosciences, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia.
Institute of Geoenergy Engineering, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland EH14 4AS, United Kingdom.
Langmuir. 2022 May 24;38(20):6387-6394. doi: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.2c00469. Epub 2022 May 9.
Interfacial tension (IFT) is a crucial parameter in many natural and industrial processes, such as enhanced oil recovery and subsurface energy storage. IFT determines how easy the fluids can pass through pore throats and hence will decide how much residual fluids will be left behind. Here, we use a porous glass micromodel to investigate the dynamic IFT between oil and Armovis viscoelastic surfactant (VES) solution based on the concept of drop deformation while passing through a pore throat. Three different concentrations of VES, that is, 0.5, 0.75, and 1.25% vol% prepared using 57 K ppm synthetic seawater, were used in this study. The rheology obtained using a rheometer at ambient temperature showed zero shear viscosity of 325, 1101, and 1953 cP for 0.5%, 0.75%, and 1.25% VES, respectively, with a power-law region between 2 and 50 1/s. The dynamic IFT increases with the shear rate and then reaches a plateau. The results of IFT were compared with those obtained from the spinning drop method, which shows 97% accuracy for 1.25% VES, whereas the accuracy decreased to 65% for 0.75 VES and 51% for 0.5% VES. The findings indicate that we can reliably estimate the IFT of VES at higher concentrations directly during multiphase flow in porous micromodels without the need to perform separate experiments and wait for a long time to reach equilibrium.
界面张力（IFT）是许多自然和工业过程中的一个关键参数，例如强化采油和地下储能。IFT决定了流体通过孔喉的难易程度，从而决定会残留多少流体。在此，我们基于液滴在通过孔喉时的变形概念，使用多孔玻璃微模型来研究油与Armovis粘弹性表面活性剂（VES）溶液之间的动态IFT。本研究中使用了三种不同浓度的VES，即使用57 K ppm合成海水配制的0.5%、0.75%和1.25%（体积百分比）。在环境温度下使用流变仪测得的流变学结果显示，对于0.5%、0.75%和1.25%的VES，零剪切粘度分别为325、1101和1953 cP，幂律区域在2至50 1/s之间。动态IFT随剪切速率增加，然后达到平稳状态。将IFT的结果与采用旋转滴法获得的结果进行了比较，结果表明对于1.25%的VES，准确率为97%，而对于0.75%的VES，准确率降至65%，对于0.5%的VES，准确率为51%。研究结果表明，我们可以在多孔微模型中的多相流过程中直接可靠地估计较高浓度下VES的IFT，而无需进行单独实验并等待很长时间达到平衡。
