ENTEG guest seminar by Dr Patrizio Raffa, entitled: "Amphiphilic block copolymers as engineering materials for enhanced oil recovery"

Abstract
The increasing global energy demand and the progressive depletion of fossil oil resources poses big challenges to our society. The techniques used to increase the amount of oil that can be extracted from an existing field (enhanced oil recovery, EOR) are based on injecting underground complex mixtures of chemicals, including polymers solutions. In this talk, amphiphilic block copolymers are presented as attractive polymers with improved features for EOR. These tunable polymers can be prepared with various compositions and structures by atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP). This work led to the discovery of new, promising systems for EOR, showing in core flood experiments a recovery up to 20% higher than commercial polymers normally employed for this application.