Investigation of the Passiflora Plant as a Promising Natural Surfactant for Enhanced Oil Recovery: Insights into Crude Oil-Water-Rock Interaction

In enhanced oil recovery(EOR), several chemicals are applied toimprove oil recovery including surfactants and polymers. Nowadays,plant extracts as natural surfactants are used for the same purposedue to their environmentally friendly and low-cost manner. In thiswork, the extract of the Passiflora plant was used as a natural surfactantin EOR applications. After confirming the validity of the naturalsurfactant using TGA, FTIR, and H-NMR, EOR surfactant solutions wereformulated at different concentrations (0.5-8 wt %) of thePassiflora extract. From the obtained results of conductivity, turbidity,and pH measurements, the optimal critical micelle concentration (CMC)was discovered to be 4 wt %. The minimum interfacial tension (IFT)of 13 mN/m was achieved under the influence of the surfactant solutionat the CMC point. The same solution of the surfactant provided 55 & DEG;as the lowest contact angle (CA) of the crude oil on the surface ofthe carbonate rock, which is water-wet. The optimal surfactant solutionenabled to extract an additional 7.5% original oil in place (OOIP)from the rock plug with 12.35% porosity and 3.5 mD permeability.