Adsorption study of a natural product into the oil producing porous media of upper Assam Basin

This paper deals with the systematic investigation of adsorption of a natural product, Black Liquor (BL) on porous media obtained from oil producing horizons of Upper Assam Basin by highlighting the crude oil recovery profile after adsorption of the natural product on to the porous media. BL an effluent from paper and pulp mills is a surfactant, which is renewable and abundantly available in this region. The experimental data obtained from the adsorption experiments were then interpreted from the well known models of Langmuir, Freundlich and Redlich-Peterson and was found that the Langmuir model fits the better fit of pH, salinity and temperature data over the entire range of variables studied in this work. This work reveals that with increase in salinity, adsorption increases due to increase in ionic charge of the aqueous medium and with increase in pH, adsorption decreases due to increase in negative charge of the aqueous phase and clay being negatively charged particles it will repel the anionic surfactant (negatively charged). Finer the grains of the porous media more will be the adsorption, since better will be the surface area of the porous media. The work is a supplementary study for the Surfactant based Enhanced oil recovery of the depleted fields of Upper Assam Basin.