ENTEG seminar by dr Patrizo Raffa; More than just “big soaps”: polymeric surfactants for enhanced oil recovery and other applications

ENTEG seminar by Patrizio Raffa

Abstract: Fossil fuels: we can’t live with them, we can’t live without them. The increasing global demand of energy and platform chemicals, and the progressive depletion of available resources, poses big challenges to our society. The techniques used to increase the amount of oil that can be extracted from an existing reservoir (collectively known as enhanced oil recovery, or its acronym EOR) are based on injecting various substances underground to increase oil mobility. In this seminar, polymeric surfactants are presented as attractive systems with interesting features for EOR. Our work led to the discovery of new, promising polymers, showing better performance in lab-scale experiments than commercial polymers normally employed for this application. Polymeric surfactants can also be used in several other applications, for example as emulsion stabilizers or in “smart” materials for sensing. Some results in these directions will be presented, as well as preparation and properties of new bio-based polymeric surfactants.