Why enhanced oil recovery and not alternative fuels

3 Microemulsions in enhanced oil recovery 10.3.1 Why enhanced oil recovery and not alternative fuels  

At this time and in the near future, there is no available substitute for petroleum-based fuels, if only cost issues are taken into account. For instance, biofuels like ethanol or vegetable oil esters cannot compete on purely economic grounds, without considering other 

Another alternative to attain synthetic liquid fuels is the coal-to-liquid route achieved through the Fischer-Tropsch process [ 108], a proven technology for which raw materials are plentiful and available almost anywhere. Therefore, it is very likely that this technology will be used to provide some of the liquid fuel in the future. Nevertheless, it first has to be overcome some of its current drawbacks, e.g. relatively high costs and serious ecological concerns. For this reason, this technology has only been used at an industrial level up to now in countries with restricted economies such as World War II Germany or South Africa under apartheid. 

Hydrogen and alcohol fuel cell technologies may help in compensating part of the demand for liquid fuel, but its wide-scale application is still at least two decades away, mainly because of technical and economical issues that need to be surmounted. 

In this chapter, of all the varieties of technologies known as tertiary oil recovery, only the one known as chemical EOR via microemulsions will be dealt with. Although it is the most complex one, it is the only tertiary technology capable of producing a large 

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