Chemical Separation, Purification, and Identification of EOR-Active Compounds in Water-Soluble Petroleum Sulfonate. Final Progress Report

摘要

Prior work carried out at the US Department of Energy's Energy Technology Center at Morgantown, West Virginia had indicated that when the commercial petroleum sulfonates i.e., Pyronate-40 or NBS is used for tertiary oil recovery, the components responsible for enhanced oil recovery constitute only a minor fraction of the complex mixture. The aim of our investigation was to fractionate one such complex petroleum sulfonate i.e., Pyronate-40, to a stage of purification and to undertake investigations for characterizing the chemical structures of the most active fractions. The most EOR-active fraction of the Pyronate-40 from the Florisil column separation step was subjected to GC/MS characterization. It was found that the methylesters of Pyronate-40 did not lend themselves to the GC/MS examination. The Pyronate-40 fractions were therefore desulfonated and the oil that distilled at 210 to 215 exp 0 C was used for the GC/MS analysis. The major species in this oil was found to be structurally similar to the hydrocarbon obtained from Texas-57 under identical conditions of desulfonation and distillation. A re-examination (by Capillary GC) of the EOR-active fraction obtained from a replicate Pyronate-40 fractionation study indicated that, in addition to the Texas-57 type of species, it contained a number of other compounds. In a separate series, NBS (a detergent alkylate sulfonate) was fractionated under conditions identical to those of Pyronate-40 fractionation on Florisil and the EOR-active fraction was desulfonated and distillated. The oil when examined by means of capillary GC (with flame ionization detector) showed a very complex pattern, although it included a Texas-57 type species as a prominent component. (ERA citation 08:008030)