Adsorption of natural surfactants on sandstone rocks: Effect on the quality of the recovered asphaltenic oil

摘要

Natural surfactants are important for any enhancing oil recovery applications since these kinds of surfactants have less detrimental effects and also lower cost in comparison to the industrial surfactants. Adsorption of surfactants on sandstone minerals is an important issue which needs to be considered before applying any surfactant-based enhanced oil recovery technique. In this study, a new model based on adaptive neuro-fuzzy interference system was developed in order to simulate the kinetic behavior of natural surfactants adsorption on sandstone minerals with high accuracy. Performance of the model was investigated by comparing the results of the proposed model with the results of previous well-known kinetic models. Results demonstrated that this model has the highest accuracy compared to the other well-established models found in literature. Finally, in order to show the importance of modeling surfactants adsorption, the effect of a natural surfactant on the quality of the produced oil was investigated by performing SARA analysis on the recovered oil at various conditions of surfactant adsorption. It is shown that in the case of lower surfactant adsorption on sandstone minerals, the produced oil has higher asphaltene fractions.