Abstract—Alkylpolyglucosides (APG) is an environment-friendly surfactant prepared from renewable raw materials namely glucose and fatty alcohol in catalysis system of
p-Toluenesulfonic acid. This surfactant is nonionic surfactant which has not effect on hard water and pH changes, thus makes it potential to be used as a chemical flooding surfactant. APG was prepared by using fatty alcohol varying in chain length from 1-dodecanol (C12) and 1-tetradecanol (C14). This paper discusses the effect of alkyl chain length of APG as hydrofobic side to their physical properties such as interfacial tension, and capability as chemical flooding surfactant for oil recovery in capillary pressure test. As results, it is shown that at the same concentration, APG with 1-tetradecanol (APG-C14) as a chain length has lower interfacial tension than APG-C12, having critical micelle concentration of 3 %. Both surfactant then were tested for Jirak field oil recovery in capillary presure test. It reveals that the increase of alkyl chain length of APG causes an increase in oil recovery (%), 13.797 % of APG-C14 and 10.733% of APG-C12. To conclude, APG with long alkyl chain length potentially become chemical flooding surfactant for oil recovery.
Index Terms—Chemical flooding, nonionic surfactant, alkylpolyglucoside, fatty alcohol, interfacial tension.
Agnesya Putri Gustianthy was with Department of Chemistry UI, Indonesia. She is now with Material and Chemical Research, Research Technology Centre of PT Pertamina, Indonesia (e-mail: agnesya.putri@pertamina.com).
Yuni K. Krisnandiis is with the Departement of Chemistry UI, Indonesia (e-mail: yuni.krisnandi@sci.ui.ac.id).
Usman is with Chemical and Petrochemical Research, Research and Technology Centre of PT Pertamina, Indonesia (e-mail: usman01@pertamina.com).
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Cite: Agnesya Putri Gustianthy, Yuni Krisyuningsih Krisnandi, and Usman, "Application of Non Ionic Surfactant – Alkylpolyglucoside as Chemical Flooding," International Journal of Chemical Engineering and Applications vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 121-125, 2019.
