In order to displace the large volume of remaining hydrocarbons in reservoirs which cannot be recovered by conventional ways, the enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technology has been developed. The EOR technologies contain chemical flooding, gas injection, thermal recovery and other methods. Surfactants play an important role in chemical flooding and its key mechanism is to reduce the oil-water interfacial tension. Anionic surfactants are ideal components for oil displacement because most of the chemical flooding work has been conducted in sandstone and the negatively charged sandstone prevents the anionic surfactant from adsorbing on the surface of the formations. Several experimental studies have proved that alpha olefin sulfonate (AOS) and internal olefin sulfonates (IOS) have good oil displacement performance. However, there are few molecular dynamics simulations for the aggregation properties of AOS and IOS at the oil-water interface. AOS and IOS have the same and simple hydrophilic headgroup which minimizes the influence of hydrophilic groups on the interfacial properties of surfactants, allowing us to focus on the difference between twin-tailed structures and single-chain structures.<br/>In this work, we use the molecular dynamics simulation method to investigate the adsorption characteristic of surfactant molecules at oil-water interface. Anionic surfactants IOS and AOS are selected to compare the effects of different molecular structures on adsorption processes. We are going to study the morphology of the surfactant monolayer, the stability of the hydrophilic group in the aqueous phase and the miscibility of the hydrophobic tails with oil molecules to compare the interface properties of the two surfactants. Octane, decane and dodecane molecules are selected to represent oil phase to compare the effects of different oils on surfactant monolayers. Besides, we plan to add inorganic salts to the system to explore the effect of salinity on the interfacial properties of surfactants. Detailed information obtained from mass density distribution, interfacial tension calculation, solvent accessible surface area calculation, hydrogen bond analysis, radial distribution function and effective alkyl tail length can help us to understand the effect of molecular architecture of surfactant molecules on the interface performance.<br/>

Evaluation of adsorption characteristics of alpha olefin sulfonate and internal olefin sulfonates at oil−water interfaces: Molecular dynamics simulation study

Macromolecular Chemistry: The Second Century

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ACS Spring 2020 National Meeting & Expo

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.