aFaculty of Physical Sciences, Department of Pure and Industrial Chemistry, Bayero University Kano, P.O Box 3011, Kano, Nigeria
ABSTRACT
With the decline in oil discoveries during the last few decades, enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technologies play significant roles to meet the growing energy demand. Foam flooding, commonly known as foam assisted water alternating gas (FAWAG), has been recognized among the effective techniques in EOR. In this study, seeds of Fenugreek plant were used to extract oil through solvent extraction technique. Subsequently, the oil was used to chemically synthesize a surfactant and characterized using FTIR spectroscopy. Dynamic foam stability (t1/2) was investigated using Ross miles method to establish synergy actions between the surfactant and brine using a response surface methodology tool. Furthermore, a t1/2 numerical model was developed after establishing the optimized stability condition. At this condition, foam morphology was characterized by microscopic analysis to observe changes in bubble size and distribution in decay profile. The results revealed that by utilizing 25 g of the seed materials, about 7 % of the oil yield was obtained which has resulted to the synthesis of about 13.86 g of surfactant. The surfactant was confirmed by the FTIR analysis due to the appearance of many important characteristic functional groups. The surfactant foam demonstrates appreciable stability (maximum; 152.66 s and optimized; 52.3 s) in relation to its good morphology (bubble size and distribution) observed. The study further established that the t1/2 is due to synergy between the surfactant and brine in the model. The findings of the paper have provided sufficient preliminary investigations and recommend suitable applications of plant derived surfactants in EOR foam technology.
