Interfacial Science for Geosystems Engineers

Dr. Kishore K. Mohanty received his BS from IIT, Kanpur and PhD from University of Minnesota, both in chemical engineering. He worked at ARCO Oil & Gas Company R&D from 1981-1991 before joining the faculty at the University of Houston where he worked for 17 years. He joined UT PGE in 2009 and was the director of the Center for Petroleum & Geosystems Engineering, 2013-2019. He has published more than 300 research papers on transport in porous media, wettability alteration, enhanced oil recovery, carbon capture and storage, and nanotechnology. He has won several awards from the Society of Petroleum Engineers including SPE John Franklin Carll Award-2022, SPE Distinguished Achievement Award for Petroleum Engineering Faculty-2016, AIME/SPE Anthony F. Lucas Technical Leadership Gold Medal-2013, the SPE IOR Pioneer Award-2008, and SPE Distinguished Member-2007 Dr. William R. Rossen received his BS from MIT and PhD from the University of Minnesota, both in chemical engineering. He worked for 7 years at Chevron Oil Field Research Co., and then joined the faculty in Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin in 1989, attaining the rank of full Professor. In 2006 he moved to Delft University of Technology (DUT) in The Netherlands. He has published more than 125 journal articles on flow in porous media and especially foam applications in geological formations. He was named Best Instructor at DUT in 2011 and an SPE IOR Pioneer in 2012. He received the SPE Distinguished Achievement Award for Petroleum Engineering Faculty in 2002. He is a Distinguished Member of the SPE. He is a co-author of Fundamentals of Enhanced Oil Recovery by L.W. Lake et al., 2014. Dr. Chun Huh received his BS from Seoul National University and Ph.D. from University of Minnesota both in chemical engineering. Before joining the UT-Austin faculty in January 2004, Dr. Huh worked as an Engineering Advisor at ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company in Houston, Texas. He is one of the leading experts on surfactant- and polymer-based improved oil recovery (IOR) processes. “Chun Huh equation”, which predicts ultralow interfacial tension from microemulsion solubilization, is widely used for the design of surfactant based IOR processes. He is also the formulator of the “Huh-Scriven paradox,” which first demonstrated the singularity generation when fluid-dynamics solutions are attempted for spreading/wetting of fluids on solid. At UT-Austin, Dr. Huh has started research on use of nanoparticles for a wide variety of upstream oil industry applications, co-authoring more than 60 papers and one book on the subject. Dr. Huh received the SPE IOR Pioneer Award in 2012; and is a SPE Distinguished Member and a member of the US National Academy of Engineering.

1. Introduction 2. Surface/Interfacial Tension; Capillarity 3. Surface Free Energy; Contact angle; Wetting 4. Surfactants 5. Surfactant Adsorption at Gas/Liquid and Liquid/Liquid Interfaces 6. Adsorption at Gas/Solid Interfaces 7. Adsorption at Liquid/Solid Interfaces 8. Equilibrium and Stability of Thin Liquid Films 9. Electrokinetics 10. Colloidal Stability 11. Wettability Alteration of Reservoir Rock Using Surfactants 12. Microemulsions 13. Emulsions 14. Foams 15. Polymers for Subsurface Applications