Development of online separation and surfactant quantification in effluents from an enhanced oil recovery (EOR) experiment

Surfactant flooding is one of the Chemical Enhanced Oil Recovery (cEOR) methods used to meet growing demand for oil. It consists in injecting an aqueous formulation containing surfactants, whose performance, both terms incremental oil production and surfactant adsorption, assessed laboratory with coreflood tests. Currently, effluents are collected tubes throughout experiment analyses performed offline. Surfactants measured phase by Hyamine assay or liquid chromatography. noteworthy that these may be difficult carry out since contain stable emulsions. Moreover, it unclear whether all surfactants phase, they partly trapped phase. To overcome difficulties quantify reliably effluents, we have developed online experimental setup includes: a dilution “millifluidic” chip transfer “microfluidic” membrane-based separation device separate from UV–visible spectrometer measure concentration. This was successfully validated model fluid mixtures evaluated on real systems. Finally, tested under representative conditions experiments. The obtained results proved efficiency facilitate quantification which clearly improves accuracy measurements.