The Role of Surfactant on the Nanoparticle-Modifiers in Facilitating Scale Inhibition

Nanotechnology has been the prime approach over the last several decades including in scaling prevention. There has been a flurry of activity in incorporating nanoparticles (NPs) with scale inhibitors (SI) to help mitigate the scales’ growth at the early stage before it worsens. However, despite the increasing use of nanoparticles in industry, reservoir complexity such as salinity and heterogeneity have significantly impacted the nanoparticles' performance in the medium. The nanoparticles' repulsive forces are reduced when brine salinity is present, resulting in flocculation and coagulation of nanoparticles in suspension and phase separation. However, the stability and dispersion of nanoparticles may be improved by altering their characteristics by coating them with a surfactant for a particular application. This can be done by introducing a surfactant in the nanoparticle suspension. Herein, this paper aims to study the dispersion and stability of different types of NPs and their performance in Sodium Dodecyl Sulfate (SDS) surfactant solution. Results obtained proved that carbon-based NPs (graphene oxide (GO) and multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT)) showed an excellent zeta potential measurement up to -116 mV when these NPs were dispersed in SDS solution. This surfactant has significantly improved the NPs stability by increasing electrostatic repulsion between the NPs while reducing the average size of agglomeration.