Simulation and Optimization of Foam EOR Processes

Chemical enhanced oil recovery (EOR) is relatively expensive due to the high cost of the injected chemicals such as surfactants. Excessive use of these chemicals leads to processes that are not economically feasible. Therefore, optimizing the volume of these injected chemicals is of extreme importance. We intend to maximize the long-term...

Enhanced transport phenomena in CO2 sequestration and CO2 EOR

The results of this thesis give insight into the (mass)-transfer during flow of gases, especially CO2, in various gas-liquid systems. A number of experiments was performed to investigate the transport phenomena through interfaces with and without surfactant monolayers. The observed phenomena have been incorporated into physical models to predict...

Bioseparations using surfactant-aided size-exclusion chromatography

In most bioprocesses one or more chromatographic steps are used in the purification of the product. Size-exclusion chromatography (SEC) is often one of these chromatographic steps. It is based on the difference in size and shape of the components to be separated and is used for the separation of molecules with a near identical chemical...

Detergency in Liquid CO2

In this dissertation we study Detergency in liquid Carbon Dioxide. Detergency is the cleaning performance of additives, surfactants in particular, in washing fluids. Liquid CO2 is under consideration, for environmental and toxicological reasons, to replace perchloro-ethylene as the solvent in textile dry cleaning technology. Inherent problems of...

Dry-cleaning with high-pressure carbon dioxide

Dry-cleaning is a process for removing soils and stains from fabrics and garments which uses a non-aqueous solvent with detergent added. The currently most used dry-cleaning solvent is perchloroethylene (PER), which is toxic, environmentally harmful and suspected to be carcinogenic. Carbon dioxide could be an ideal solvent to replace PER; carbon...