Bubbling Nitrogen Techniques for Esterification of Nonionic Surfactant for EOR Application
Abstract
Many industrial sectors, especially cosmetics, food, and pharmaceuticals have high interest determination. Confirmation the surfactant in surfactants, due to the unique chemical properties of the molecule which containing two groups with different polarity properties. Petroleum industry also has an interest for applying surfactants to increase oil production in mature oil fields which experience a decline in oil production. This method is known as Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) technology. The development of vegetable materials for surfactant synthesis is preferably in association with the abundant availability, renewable and environmentally friendly raw materials. In this research, surfactant synthesis was carried out using vegetable materials as a hydrophobic group and polyethylene glycol as a hydrophilic group that forming an ester. There are various techniques to produce esters, such as reflux technique using a condenser, the azeotrop technique using dean-stark, enzymatic techniques using enzymes from a bacterium, and the bubbling technique using nitrogen gas. Esterification of this nonionic surfactant was performed by nitrogen bubbling method with the oleic acid and polyethylene glycol (PEG) 400 as substrate. Since bubbling method are environmentally friendly without the use of organic solvents and economically efficient in large scale applications, this method was favorable to be conducted.
Reaction optimization was carried out through equivalent variations of oleic acid and PEG (1: 1.1; 1:2; 1:3; 1;4) and variations in reaction time (3, 4, 5, and 6 hours). The ester product was identified by thin layer chromatography test for optimum condition determination. Confirmation the surfactant structure was performed by H1NMR. The optimized surfactant was further characterized by an interface tension test (IFT) to see the surfactant's ability to reduce IFT between water and oil. The results showed that the optimum conditions for esterification of OleatePEG 400 which produced the best reaction conversion was obtained with the equivalent ratio oleic acid and PEG 1: 3 and reaction time of 6 hours. The surfactant structure has been confirmed using H1NMR and able to decrease the oil and water interfacial tension up to 10-4 dyne/cm in brine salinity condition 18000 ppm and oil 34,39o API.
