Application of a Testing Equipment with Optical Imaging for Interfacial Tension on Open Experimental Teaching

Improving mobility ratio to enhance sweep efficiency and increasing capillary number to enhance oil displacement efficiency are two main ways to enhance oil recovery, so the determination of oil-water interfacial tension is the major means of flooding surfactant performance evaluation and super-low interfacial tension (less than 10^-3 mN/m) surfactant research. At the same time, the demulsification and dehydration of oil emulsion is a key to oilfield surface engineering. Now the most common method is chemical demulsification technique that is adding demulsifier to crude oil to destroy elastic shell (interfacial film) formed by emulsifier, making small water droplets coalesce to big ones and achieving oil-water settling separation. Therefore, mastering interface property knowledge and determining oil-brine system interfacial tension of different demulsifiers in conditions of different concentrations and different temperatures, are significant to analyze the adsorption properties of demulsifiers on oil-water interface, realize demulsification mechanism and guide the synthesis and screening of demulsifiers. In this paper, the configuration, the experiment method and the application on open experimental teaching of a testing equipment with optical imaging for interfacial tension are introduced. Through application analysis, besides its effect is summarized, the key problems and corresponding solutions are put forward.