TITLE:
Surfactant Adsorbed at the Oil-Water Interface and Its Elimination
AUTHORS:
Linfeng Yang, Leonidas Perez Estrada
KEYWORDS:
Surfactant, Adsorption Equilibrium, Membrane, Surface Tension, Naphthenic Acids, Oil Sands Process-Affected Water
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection,
Vol.3 No.2,
April
1,
2015
ABSTRACT: Surfactants are widely used in
the petroleum industry as one kind of Enhanced Oil Recovery methods (EOR). The
oil sands mines in Northern Alberta are the largest one in the world. Due to
using sodium hydroxide in bitumen extraction process, there are a lot of
surfactant molecules in the tailing water. The surfactants from oil sands
industry have brought a potential threat to the environment and human health. Depending
on the performance of surfactant at the interface, this work focuses on removing
these harmful surfactants from the tailing water and not bringing other
possible hazardous substances. Moreover, a mathematical model is built to
calculate the removal efficiency of the surfactant. The time required for
removing the surfactant is determined experimentally. In conclusion, most of
surfactant molecules are adsorbed at the oil/water interface. The fraction of
the surfactant staying at the oil/water interface is high. Most of the surfactants
in tailing water can be eliminated. The time of surfactant migration can be
used for setting up the update time of the oil film in the automatic
instrument, which can be designed in the future.