For this study, we have employed four different imidazolium based ILs with variation in alkyl chain length, that were purchased from Sigma Aldrich and used as such. They are namely,
1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride [C
4mim]
+[Cl]
−, 1-hexyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride [C
6mim]
+[Cl]
−, 1-octyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride [C
8mim]
+[Cl]
−, and 1-decyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride [C
12mim]
+[Cl]
−.
Fig. 1 shows the chemical structures of the ILs with their corresponding abbreviations.
In addition to this, we also studied four various surfactants from different categories, they are namely, alpha-olefin sulfonate (AOS, Al-Biariq petrochemical Industries Co. Ltd) from anionic,
cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB, Sigma Aldrich) from cationic, fluorosurfactant capstone (FS-31, DuPont Co. Ltd) from nonionic, and 3-(
N,
N-dimethylmyristylammonio) propanesulfonate (
betaine; Sigma Aldrich) from zwitterionic category.
In order to emulate the typical Saudi Arabian reservoirs, we have formulated three various brine fluids with variations in salt compositions and used them for this study. They are namely, seawater (SW: TDS = 67 500 ppm), low salinity formation water (LS: TDS = 138 000 ppm) and high salinity formation water (FW: TDS = 241 000 ppm).
Indiana limestone outcrop sample was used for the dynamic foaming experiments. The petrophysical property of the core sample is listed in
Table 1.
Sakthivel S, & Babu Salin R. (2021). Imidazolium based ionic liquid stabilized foams for conformance control: bulk and porous scale investigation. RSC Advances, 11(47), 29711-29727.