Aplicação de técnicas de espalhamento a sistemas coloidais destinados à extração de petróleo

Abstract

The oil industry needs various chemicals compounds in their extraction processes and invests in new technologies all the time. Worm-like micelles-WLM and polyelectrolyte complexes-PECs have been studied to join as new technologias in oil extraction processes. This thesis aims to obtain, characterize and identify these colloidal systems using as a tool light scattering experiments; enabling the required knowledge to applied them in oil industry. To the surfactants systems, the parameters from DLS, b, GC and n in a function of surfactant/co-surfactant concentrations suffered transitions around 200 g/L. The addition of oil phase, xylene, hinders the transition from spherical micelles to worm-like micelles. In SAXS, the ratio RG,O/ RG,S reaches a maximum value which corroborates with the transition in DLS. To PECs, b increases sharply, n becomes more homogeneous, GC,2 and second contribution to the process, f2, were visualized for polyanion/polycation ratio with WAC next 2. This region in SAXS, PECs clusters adsorb in primary particles, which contributed to the behavior of Kratky graphics. The pair distribution functin, P(r), lose its bell shape and widen. The S17 and S29 were higher for lower values of WAC ratio. S37 was influential in higher values.