摘要：Chemical enhanced oil recovery processes (EOR) are effective if the injected chemical slugs propagate through the oil reservoir. With surfactant flooding, the loss of surfactant to adsorption onto rock surfaces significantly affects the effectiveness of the chemical flooding. Therefore, the adsorption of surfactant onto solid surfaces is a major issue that makes the process uneconomical. In this paper, the first of a series of three, a new approach to preventing surfactant adsorption onto rock surfaces is studied. A novel surfactant delivery system based on inclusion complexes between sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) and β‐cyclodextrin was evaluated. The adsorption of SDS in free‐ and complex‐state onto solid surfaces was investigated through static adsorption tests. Different mixtures of solid materials (sandstone, oil shale, and kaolinite) were used as adsorbents. The adsorption of the surfactant was quantified through analysis of total organic carbon (TOC). Qualitative experiments through bottle testing were also conducted to visualize the effectiveness of the surfactant delivery system. Experimental results demonstrate that the surfactant delivery system effectively minimizes the adsorption of surfactant (SDS) onto solid surfaces, with reductions of surfactant adsorption ranging from 64–76%. Likewise, the release of the surfactant hydrophobic tail from the β‐CD cavity was qualitatively verified through bottle testing. Therefore, this novel surfactant delivery system shows great potential for chemical EOR flooding applications.
