Boundary layers and surface forces in pure nonaqueous liquids

A Laboratory Approach on the Hybrid-Enhanced Oil Recovery Techniques with Different Saline Brines in Sandstone Reservoirs

As foams are not thermodynamically stable and might be collapsed, foam stability is defined by interfacial properties and bulk solution. In this paper, we investigated foam injection and different salinity brines such as NaCl, CaCl2, KCl, and MgCl2 to measure cumulative oil production. According to the results of this experiment, it is concluded that sequential low-salinity water injections with KCl and foam flooding have provided the highest cumulative oil production in sandstone reservoirs. This issue is related to high wettability changes that had been caused by the KCl. As K+ is a monovalent cation, KCl has the highest wettability changes compared to other saline brines and formation water at 1000 ppm, which is due to the higher wettability changes of potassium (K+) over other saline ions. The interfacial tension for KCl at the lowest value is 1000 ppm and, for MgCl2, has the highest value in this concentration. Moreover, the formation brine, regarding its high value of salty components, had provided lower cumulative oil production before and after foam injection as it had mobilized more in the high permeable zones and, therefore, large volumes of oil would be trapped in the small permeable zones. This was caused by the low wettability alteration of the formation brine. Thereby, formation water flowed in large pores and the oil phase remained in small pores and channels. On the other hand, as foams played a significant role in the mobility control and sweep efficiency, at 2 pore volume, foam increased the pressure drop dramatically after brine injection. Consequently, foam injection after KCl brine injection had the maximum oil recovery factor of 63.14%. MgCl2 and formation brine had 41.21% and 36.51% oil recovery factor.

Water and Ice Adhesion to Solid Surfaces: Common and Specific, the Impact of Temperature and Surface Wettability

Ice adhesion plays a crucial role in the performance of materials under outdoor conditions, where the mitigation of snow and ice accumulation or spontaneous shedding of solid water precipitations are highly desirable. In this brief review we compare the adhesion of water and ice to different surfaces and consider the mechanisms of ice adhesion to solids basing on the surface forces analysis. The role of a premelted or quasi-liquid layer (QLL) in the ice adhesion is discussed with the emphasis on superhydrophobic surfaces, and the temperature dependence of ice adhesion strength is considered with an account of QLL. We also very briefly mention some recent methods for the measurement of ice adhesion strength to the icephobic engineering materials outlining the problems which remain to be experimentally solved.