Performance Evaluation of Natural Surfactant Extracted from Fenugreek Seeds for Subsurface Resource Mobilization: Synthesis, Characterization and Stability Studies
摘要
Crude oil is among the high valued sources of energy that is being demanded for various day to day activities. Crude oil mainly consists of colloidal particles and is considered to be a complex fluid. In general, water in oil emulsion is observed during the production of crude oil. Thus the stability of emulsion plays a vital role. Emulsions are stabilized by application of surfactants, polymer, nanoparticles etc. In this study, application of novel green surfactant has been done for the emulsification of crude oil. The natural surfactant has been extracted in laboratory from seeds of Trigonella foenum-graecum. Oil in water emulsion was formulated by using the extracted natural surfactant. The formulated emulsion mainly consists of 40% crude oil and 60% aqueous surfactant solution. Prepared emulsions were stabilized by commonly used polymer hydrolyzed polyacrylamide (HPAM) in presence of surfactant at CMC (0.2 wt%) and silica nanoparticle (1 wt%)-surfactant-polymer, abbreviated as SP emulsion and NSP emulsion respectively. The NSP emulsion was found stable even at high temperature, validated by microscopic study. The effectiveness of surfactant was investigated by Interfacial Tension (IFT) measurements. Thus results conclude that the extracted surfactant has enough potential in stabilizing oil in water emulsions in presence of nanoparticle and suggested its application in enhanced oil recovery as well as transportation through pipelines.