The Use of Palm Oil Based Surfactants for Oil Recovery Enhancement

Indonesia is a large palm oil producer in the world which produces 35.36 million tons of Crude Palm Oil (CPO) (Indonesian Plantation Statistics, 2017). With large CPO production, the development of palm oil-based surfactants is very open and has great potential for use in EOR applications. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine whether the use of palm oil-based surfactants could be used to increase oil recovery. Method: Tests were carried out, among others, by making surfactants, EOR screening tests, characteristic tests, and core flooding tests. Other sources also carried out tests by selecting surfactants and polymers, analyzing physical & chemical properties, and measuring interfacial tension. Result: The research was conducted on fields with intermediate crude oil using 5 surfactant variants namely, MES surfactantt, BES surfactant, and PDS surfactant. There are three variants of PDS surfactants, PDSH1, PDSH2 and PDSH3. With a synthesis time of 60 minutes, a brine salinity of 18000 ppm, and a concentration of 1.0%, PDSH3 surfactant showed the most optimal performance and resulted in an oil recovery of 22.1%. On another source, PDS with 60 minutes of synthesis also produced the best increase in recovery factor with an IFT of 4.665 x 10-3 dyne/cm. Then a thermal test was carried out for 3 months at a temperature of 60℃ on the composition of 0.3% Surfactant + 0.3% NaCl + 0.15% Flopaam 3630S giving IFT result of 5.39E-03 dyne/cm, filtration rate of 1.1, and viscosity of 31.73 cP and 0.3% Surfactant + 0.3% NaCl + 0.2% Flopaam 3630S giving IFT result of 6.92E-03 dyne/cm, filtration rate of 1.19, and viscosity of 56.47 cP. As well as the core flood test with Berea core media, the two formulas with an injection volume of 0.3% obtain a potential increase in recovery factor of 13-18.8%. On another source, research was conducted by sulfonation for 7 hours on MES surfactants from Palm Oil Methyl Ester (POME) and Sodium Bisulfite (NaHSO3), able to reduce the surface tension of water and emulsion stability by 33.95 dyne/cm and 89%. Conclusion: through various tests, palm oil based surfactants are proven to increase oil recovery