Supercritical surfactant

Surfactants for Mobility Control. Water, which can have a mobihty up to 10 times that of oil, has been used to decrease the mobihty of gases and supercritical CO2 (mobihty on the order of 50 times that of oil) used in miscible flooding. Gas oil mobihty ratios, Af, can be calculated by the following (22) ... 

The WAG process has been used extensively in the field, particularly in supercritical CO2 injection, with considerable success (22,157,158). However, a method to further reduce the viscosity of injected gas or supercritical fluid is desired. One means of increasing the viscosity of CO2 is through the use of supercritical C02-soluble polymers and other additives (159). The use of surfactants to form low mobihty foams or supercritical CO2 dispersions within the formation has received more attention (160—162). Foam has also been used to reduce mobihty of hydrocarbon gases and nitrogen. The behavior of foam in porous media has been the subject of extensive study (4). X-ray computerized tomographic analysis of core floods indicate that addition of 500 ppm of an alcohol ethoxyglycerylsulfonate increased volumetric sweep efficiency substantially over that obtained in a WAG process (156). 

Finally, Jessop and coworkers describe an organometalhc approach to prepare in situ rhodium nanoparticles [78]. The stabilizing agent is the surfactant tetrabutylammonium hydrogen sulfate. The hydrogenation of anisole, phenol, p-xylene and ethylbenzoate is performed under biphasic aqueous/supercritical ethane medium at 36 °C and 10 bar H2. The catalytic system is poorly characterized. The authors report the influence of the solubility of the substrates on the catalytic activity, p-xylene was selectively converted to czs-l,4-dimethylcyclohexane (53% versus 26% trans) and 100 TTO are obtained in 62 h for the complete hydrogenation of phenol, which is very soluble in water. 

Surfactants and Colloids in Supercritical Fluids Because very few nonvolatile molecules are soluble in CO2, many types of hydrophilic or lipophilic species may be dispersed in the form of polymer latexes (e.g., polystyrene), microemulsions, macroemulsions, and inorganic suspensions of metals and metal oxides (Shah et al., op. cit.). The environmentally benign, nontoxic, and nonflammable fluids water and CO2 are the two most abundant and inexpensive solvents on earth. Fluorocarbon and hydrocarbon-based surfactants have been used to form reverse micelles, water-in-C02... 

C2-C4 w-alkanes [42,43], and in supercritical carbon dioxide when employing novel surfactants with fluorocarbon tails [38,44], There is also interest in the further employment of lipids (triglycerides and wax esters, such as isopropyl myristate) as solvent to improve biocompatibility [45],... 

The displacing fluid may be steam, supercritical carbon dioxide, hydrocarbon miscible gases, nitrogen or solutions of surfactants or polymers instead of water. The VSE increases with lower mobility ratio values (253). A mobility ratio of 1.0 is considered optimum. The mobility of water is usually high relative to that of oil. Steam and oil-miscible gases such as supercritical carbon dioxide also exhibit even higher mobility ratios and consequent low volumetric sweep efficiencies. 

Yu, K.M.K., Steele, A.M., Zhu, J Fu, Q.J. and Tsang, S.C. (2003) Synthesis of well-dispersed nanoparticles within porous solid structures using surface-tethered surfactants in supercritical CO2-Journal of Materials Chemistry, 13 (1), 130-134. 

Eastoe, J., Paul, A., Nave, S., Steyfler, D.C., Robinson, B.H., Rumsey, E., Thorpe, M. and Heenan, R.K. (2001) Micellization of hydrocarbon surfactants in supercritical carbon dioxide. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 123 (5), 988-989. 

Liu, J., Han, B., Li, G., Zhang, X., He, J. and Liu, Z. (2001) Investigation of nonionic surfactant Dynol-604 based reverse microemulsions formed in supercritical carbon dioxide. Langmuir,... 

De Simone et al. synthesized poly(fluoroalkyl acrylate)-based block copolymers for use as lipophilic/C02-philic surfactants for carbon dioxide applications [181]. The particle diameter and distribution of sizes during dispersion polymerization in supercritical carbon dioxide were shown to be dependent on the nature of the stabilizing block copolymer [182]. 

Micelle formation of our block copolymers in fluorinated solvents indicates that these polymers might act as stabilizers or surfactants in a number of stabilization problems with high technological impact, e.g., the surface between standard polymers and media with very low cohesion energy such as short-chain hydrocarbons (isopentane, butane, propane), fluorinated solvents (hexafluoroben-zene, perfluoro(methylcyclohexane), perfluorohexane) and supercritical C02. As... 

Fernandez et al. [9] used supercritical fluid extraction combined with ion pair liquid chromatography to determine quaternary ammonium in digested sludges and marine sediments. Carbon dioxide modified with 30% methanol was used as the extractant at an operating pressure of 380atm. Between 0.2 and 3.7g kg-1 surfactant was found in Swiss works effluent sludges, determined with a relative standard deviation of 7%. 

Non-ionic surfactants of a commercial washing powder were separated by supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) and determined by APCI-MS. The constituents were first extracted by supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) using C02 with or without methanol as a modifier. Variations of the conditions resulted in a selective extraction of the analytes, which could be determined without further purification. Six groups of surfactants were observed, four of which are alkyl-polyethoxylates. The presence of APEO could be excluded by identification recording SFC-FTIR (Fourier transform infrared) spectra [31]. 

Quaternary ammonium cationic surfactants, such as DTDMAC, were determined in digested sludge by using supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) and FIA-ESI-MS(+) after separation by normal phase LC. Standard compounds—commercially available DTDMAC— were used to check the results. The DTDMAC mixture examined showed ions at m/z 467, 495, 523, 551, and 579 all equally spaced by A m/z 28 (-CH2-CH2-) resulting from the ionisation of compounds like RR N (CH3)2 X (R = / RO as shown in Fig. 2.12.11(a) and (b) [22],... 

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