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Surfactants at Liquid Interfaces: Applications in Enhanced Oil Recovery, 2nd Edition

A special issue of Molecules (ISSN 1420-3049). This special issue belongs to the section "Physical Chemistry".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2025) | Viewed by 1885

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Lu Zhang

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
Interests: surfactants; enhanced oil recovery; interfacial tension; interfacial rheology; wettability; emulsion; foam
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Surfactants can adsorb at the oil–water interface and greatly reduce oil–water interfacial tension, and thus, are widely used for improving oil recovery. In recent years, with the development of high-temperature and high-salinity reservoirs, heavy oil reservoirs, low-permeability reservoirs and other harsh-condition reservoirs, new functional requirements, such as temperature resistance, salt resistance, viscosity reduction, wetting modification and controllable emulsification performance, have been established for surfactants. The interfacial properties of new surfactants, such as extended and zwitterionic surfactants, have become a hot topic in recent years. As such, we are pleased to launch this Special Issue entitled "Surfactants at Liquid Interfaces: Applications in Enhanced Oil Recovery, 2nd Edition" to improve the current understanding of the structure–performance relationships of surfactants in the areas of enhanced oil recovery and interface science.

This Special Issue aims to collect original research and review articles on all aspects of the interface behavior of surfactants, especially extended and zwitterionic surfactants, for enhanced oil recovery.

Dr. Lu Zhang
Guest Editor

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Molecules is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • liquid interface
  • surfactant
  • adsorption
  • crude oil
  • enhanced oil recovery
  • interfacial tension

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Related Special Issue

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

15 pages, 1941 KiB  
Article
The High Interfacial Activity of Betaine Surfactants Triggered by Nonionic Surfactant: The Vacancy Size Matching Mechanism of Hydrophobic Groups
by Guoqiao Li, Jinyi Zhao, Lu Han, Qingbo Wu, Qun Zhang, Bo Zhang, Rushan Yue, Feng Yan, Zhaohui Zhou and Wei Ding
Molecules 2025, 30(11), 2413; https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules30112413 - 30 May 2025
Viewed by 293
Abstract
Alkyl sulfobetaine shows a strong advantage in the compounding of surfactants due to the defects in the size matching of hydrophilic and hydrophobic groups. The interfacial tensions (IFTs) of alkyl sulfobetaine (ASB) and xylene-substituted alkyl sulfobetaine (XSB) with oil-soluble (Span80) and water-soluble (Tween80) [...] Read more.
Alkyl sulfobetaine shows a strong advantage in the compounding of surfactants due to the defects in the size matching of hydrophilic and hydrophobic groups. The interfacial tensions (IFTs) of alkyl sulfobetaine (ASB) and xylene-substituted alkyl sulfobetaine (XSB) with oil-soluble (Span80) and water-soluble (Tween80) nonionic surfactants on a series of n-alkanes were studied using a spinning drop tensiometer to investigate the mechanism of IFT between nonionic and betaine surfactants. The two betaine surfactants’ IFTs are considerably impacted differently by Span80 and Tween80. The results demonstrate that Span80, through mixed adsorption with ASB and XSB, can create a relatively compacted interfacial film at the n-alkanes–water interface. The equilibrium IFT can be reduced to ultra-low values of 5.7 × 10−3 mN/m at ideal concentrations by tuning the fit between the size of the nonionic surfactant and the size of the oil-side vacancies of the betaine surfactant. Nevertheless, Tween80 has minimal effect on the IFT of betaine surfactants, and the betaine surfactant has no vacancies on the aqueous side. The present study provides significant research implications for screening betaine surfactants and their potential application in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) processes. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Surfactants at Liquid Interfaces: Applications in Enhanced Oil Recovery, 2nd Edition)
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20 pages, 6528 KiB  
Article
Exploring the Performance Advantages of p-Aminobenzenesulfonate-Based Zwitterionic Gemini Surfactants in Oil Recovery
by Zhaozheng Song, Shiyuan Xia, Tongji Yang, Zhihong Li and Jiayi Li
Molecules 2025, 30(7), 1537; https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules30071537 - 30 Mar 2025
Viewed by 377
Abstract
To investigate the specific performance enhancement of oilfield surfactants by using sodium p-aminobenzenesulfonate as a connecting group, cationic surfactant N,N-dimethyl-N-(oxiran-2-ylmethyl)dodecan-1-aminium (DDPA) and zwitterionic gemini surfactant sodium 4-[bis(3-(dodecyldimethylamino)-2-hydroxypropyl)amino]benzenesulfonate (DDBS) were synthesized. The oil recovery performance of these surfactants was compared, revealing that DDBS outperforms [...] Read more.
To investigate the specific performance enhancement of oilfield surfactants by using sodium p-aminobenzenesulfonate as a connecting group, cationic surfactant N,N-dimethyl-N-(oxiran-2-ylmethyl)dodecan-1-aminium (DDPA) and zwitterionic gemini surfactant sodium 4-[bis(3-(dodecyldimethylamino)-2-hydroxypropyl)amino]benzenesulfonate (DDBS) were synthesized. The oil recovery performance of these surfactants was compared, revealing that DDBS outperforms DDPA in thermal stability, wettability, adsorption, and resistance to temperature and salinity variations, as well as surface/interface activity, except for emulsification. Core flooding experiments, simulating the conditions of the Xinjiang oilfield, demonstrated that DDBS can achieve the same enhanced oil recovery effect at a concentration that is 1/15 of that of DDPA. Compared with water, DDBS and DDPA can incrementally enhance recovery rates by 7.9% and 8.5%. Furthermore, the synergistic formulation of DDBS with sodium dodecylbenzenesulfonate (SDS) significantly optimized performance, achieving a reduction in interfacial tension to 0.0301 mN m−1. This study provides a research and data foundation for the application of new surfactants in petroleum extraction. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Surfactants at Liquid Interfaces: Applications in Enhanced Oil Recovery, 2nd Edition)
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12 pages, 2908 KiB  
Article
The Interfacial Dilational Rheology of Surfactant Solutions with Low Interfacial Tension
by Guoxuan Ma, Qingtao Gong, Zhicheng Xu, Zhiqiang Jin, Lei Zhang, Guiyang Ma and Lu Zhang
Molecules 2025, 30(3), 447; https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules30030447 - 21 Jan 2025
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 911
Abstract
In this paper, the spinning drop method was used to measure the oil–water interfacial dilational modulus of four different types of surfactants with low interfacial tension (IFT), including the anionic surfactant sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), the nonionic surfactant Triton X-100 (TX100), the zwitterionic [...] Read more.
In this paper, the spinning drop method was used to measure the oil–water interfacial dilational modulus of four different types of surfactants with low interfacial tension (IFT), including the anionic surfactant sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), the nonionic surfactant Triton X-100 (TX100), the zwitterionic surfactant alkyl sulfobetaine (ASB), and the extended surfactant alkyl polyoxypropyl ether sodium sulfate (S-C13PO13S). Based on the experimental results, we found that the spinning drop method is an effective means of measuring the interfacial dilational modulus of the oil–water interface with an IFT value of lower than 10 mN/m. For common surfactants SDS and TX100, the interfacial dilational modulus decreases rapidly to near zero with an increase in concentration when the IFT is lower than 1 mN/m. On the other hand, ASB has the highest interfacial dilatation modulus of 50 mN/m, which comes from the flatness of its unique hydrophilic group structure. The interfacial dilational modulus of S-C13PO13S showed a moderate plateau value of 30 mN/m with a broader concentration change. This is due to the fact that the main relaxation process dominating the interfacial film properties comes from the long helical polyoxypropyl chain. Through the large-size hydrophilic groups in betaine molecules and the long PO chains in the extended surfactant molecules, an interfacial film with controllable strength can be formed in a low IFT system to obtain a higher interfacial dilational modulus. This is of great significance in improving the emulsification and oil displacement of chemical flooding in reservoir pores. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Surfactants at Liquid Interfaces: Applications in Enhanced Oil Recovery, 2nd Edition)
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