Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 167 (2018) 192–201

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Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/petrol

The use of ionic liquids as additive to stabilize surfactant foam for mobility T
control application
Alvinda Sri Hanamertania, Rashidah M. Pilusa,∗, Ninie A. Mananb, M. Ibrahim A. Mutalibc
a
Department of Petroleum Engineering, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, 32610, Perak, Malaysia
b
Department of Chemistry, University of Malaya, 50603, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
c
Department of Chemical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, 32610, Perak, Malaysia

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Foam application has been introduced in enhanced oil recovery processes for mobility control to overcome some
Surfactant issues occurred during gas injection. The stability of foam has become the main concern as it dictates the
Foam additive effectiveness of foam mobility control. Many attempts at enhancing foam stability under reservoir conditions
Ionic liquid involve the application of chemical additives which can produce synergistic effect in combination with sur-
Foam stability
factant. Ionic liquids (ILs), salts melting below 100 °C, are considered to be able to alter surface behavior of
Foamscan
surfactant molecules, hence supporting the surfactant performance at the interface. Their alteration is expected
to be favorable in improving surface properties of foam. This research has introduced ionic liquid based additives
for the first time to improve surfactant foam stability. Identification of the effect of ILs was performed by
conducting bulk foam experiments at ambient conditions and also at high temperature using Foamscan. The
foaming properties of in-house surfactant (MFOMAX) were evaluated in the absence and presence of ILs at
different mixture ratios. The results show that imidazolium- and eutectic-based ILs were able to improve sur-
factant foam stability to different extent at high temperature and their effect on foam stabilization was more
pronounced at surfactant/IL mixture ratio of 60:40. The highest foam stability increment exhibited by the best
formulation reached 136% of that achieved by the formulation without IL. This study has indicated that ionic
liquid has a promising potential for improving surfactant-stabilized foam mobility control during EOR processes.

1. Introduction
The application of foam in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) processes
has been developed to improve the sweep efficiency by controlling gas
mobility during gas injection process. Foam has been proposed to
control gas mobility by overcoming several drawbacks, such as viscous
fingering due to low gas viscosity, gravity override due to low gas
density, and gas channeling due to reservoir heterogeneity (Casteel and
Djabbarah, 1988; Farzaneh and Sohrabi, 2013; Green and Willhite,
1998; Sharma and Shah, 1989). Foam is typically generated with the
presence of foaming agent (surfactant) which is able to keep the gas
dispersion stable in liquid phase (Exerowa and Kruglyakov, 1997). The
presence of surfactant could increase the stability of two-phase inter-
faces by decreasing the gas/liquid surface tension leading to the for-
mation of foam. An excellent foaming agent should possess some
characteristics contributing to maximize its performance under re-
servoir condition, for instance, good solubility in the formation brine,
good thermal stability, low adsorption onto reservoir rock, strong
ability to promote and stabilize foam lamellae, and low partitioning
into the crude-oil phase (Schramm, 2006). Some literature also ascer-
tained that the effectiveness of foam application in EOR processes is
mainly dependent on foam stability, foam compatibility, and chemical
adsorption onto the reservoir rock surface (Belhaij et al., 2014; Mumtaz
et al., 2015; Tyrode et al., 2003; Wang and Li, 2014). The reduction of
surfactant performance in producing stable foam due to harsh condi-
tions of reservoir and adsorption phenomena on reservoir rocks surfaces
has led to chemicals modifications and formulations as well as new
technologies development (Azira et al., 2008; Mannhardt et al., 2000;
Osei-Bonsu et al., 2016; Zhu et al., 1998).
The addition of other chemicals (additives) to surfactant solution
has been considered to enhance foam surface properties which ulti-
mately strengthen the thin liquid film in foam, called lamellae. Specific
types of additive may produce the synergetic effect with the surfactant
to increase foam stability by several ways, such as improving the
elasticity of lamellae, decreasing the drainage of liquid phase,
strengthening the lamellae to reduce gas diffusion, and increasing the
surface viscosity. There are several categories of additives that can be
used to stabilize foam, such as organic compounds, electrolytes, finely

∗
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: rashidah_mp@utp.edu.my (R.M. Pilus).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.petrol.2018.04.010
Received 25 November 2017; Received in revised form 10 March 2018; Accepted 4 April 2018
Available online 05 April 2018
0920-4105/ © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
A.S. Hanamertani et al.
divided particles, polymers, biopolymers, and liquid crystals (Ahmed
et al., 2017b; Hunter et al., 2008; Khristov et al., 2011; Lai and Dixit,
1996; Sett et al., 2015). Each category has typical mechanism in sta-
bilizing foam. The presence of additives, such as alcohol, polymer, salt,
nanoparticles and combination of different surfactants has been re-
ported to have potential to enhance the performance and stability of
conventional foams produced from single surfactant system (Ahmed
et al., 2017a; Eftekhari et al., 2015; Pandey et al., 2003; Petkova et al.,
2012; Schelero and von Klitzing, 2015; Vikingstad and Aarra, 2009).
Certain types of polymer, for example, polyacrylamide polymers in low
concentration, have been reported to improve foam resistance and foam
stability in saline condition (Raible, 1995). However, the use of high
molecular weight of polymer is not favorable for some reservoirs due to
its possibility to plug the low permeable rocks. Moreover, significant
amount of polymer is needed to encounter high salinity reservoir brine
which will make the process uneconomical. In practical application,
surface active organic compounds are commonly used as foam additives
(Lai and Dixit, 1996). The presence of organic additive tends to form
closed arrangement of molecules at the interface. This condition could
produce a more elastic and strong foam film which withstand external
disturbance. The closely packed molecule arrangement across the foam
film can be influenced by electrostatic stabilization between ionic heads
of surfactant (Myers, 2005a). Other than that, this phenomenon is fa-
vorable for micelle formation (micellization) which will impart better
rheological properties to foam phase (Rodrigues et al., 2011; Zhou and
Rosen, 2003).
Recently, some researchers have tried to investigate the capability
of ionic liquids as alternative chemicals in enhanced oil recovery pro-
cesses. Ionic liquid has also been promoted as novel surfactant because
of its ability to reduce oil/water interfacial tension at various salinity
and temperatures (Benzagouta et al., 2013; Hezave et al., 2013b,
2013c). Ionic liquids (ILs) are ionic compounds and typically composed
of both organic cation and organic/inorganic anion which have melting
point less than 100 °C. ILs are usually classified based on their cationic
part, such as ammonium, imidazolium, pyridinium, and phosphonium
(Wang and Wang, 2014). Besides melting at low temperatures, ILs have
beneficial properties such as negligible vapor pressure, wide liquid
range and high chemical and thermal stability (Kokorin, 2011; Zhang
et al., 2006). Moreover, certain ILs containing the imidazolium ring
exhibit very high thermal stability up to 400 °C (Tokuda et al., 2005;
Zhang et al., 2006). Some studies have also reported the distinctive
ability of ILs to alter physicochemical properties and micellar structure
of surfactant in aqueous solution by influencing surface and micelliza-
tion behavior of the surfactant through some mechanisms, such as
electrostatic stabilization, hydrophobic interactions, and hydrogen
bonding formation (Javadian et al., 2013, 2014). The presence of ILs
which have surface activity, for instance, phosphonium- and imidazo-
lium-based ionic liquid, can lead surfactants to undergo molecules re-
arrangement on the surface by stabilizing the electrical repulsion be-
tween ionic head groups of surfactant (Hezave et al., 2013a, 2013c;
Lago et al., 2012; Selwent and Łuczak, 2016). This behavior can be
indicated by the reduction of critical micelle concentration (CMC)
value, surface tension, and/or water/oil interfacial tension. In this case,
ILs are able to be partially adsorbed at the interface in combination
with surfactant, forming closely packed arrangement of mixed mole-
cules (Javadian et al., 2013). Other studies also suggested that an al-
teration in surface activity of surfactant in the presence of ILs is entirely
influenced by some interactions taking place between ions of surfactant
and IL which can also cause the transformation of the premicellar ag-
gregation into mixed micelles formation (Comelles et al., 2015; Li et al.,
2009). This phenomenon is dependent on the charge types possessed by
surfactant and IL. On this basis, the ability of ILs in affecting surfactant
behavior at the interface corresponds to the way by which additives
could help to stabilize foams. This drives the investigation on the po-
tential of ionic liquid as additive for foam stabilization.
Besides common types of ILs as mentioned above, recently, eutectic-
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Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 167 (2018) 192–201
based ionic liquids have also attracted interests from many researchers.
They have been promoted as novel solvents which can be applied in
many applications due to their high solute solubility, economical use,
wide potential window, and good environmental compatibility.
Eutectics term can be defined as a mixture of two compounds which
have strong interaction at equilibrium composition which results in the
alteration of each property, for instance, melting point. As a common
example, choline chloride (the quaternary ammonium salt), can be
associated with different complexing agents to form eutectic mixture,
known as Deep Eutectic Solvent (DES) (Abbott et al., 2003; Abdullah
and Kadhom, 2016). DES has been considered as an alternative class of
ILs which consists of hydrogen bond donor (HBD) and hydrogen bond
accepter (HBA) associated each other to exhibit a mixture melting point
which is lower than that of each individual component. The complexing
agents (HBD) commonly required to reach very low melting point are
like urea, malonic acid, oxalic acid, glycerol, and ethylene glycol
(Abbott et al., 2003). In its liquid form, the charge delocalization in DES
structure is mostly caused by hydrogen bonding (Abbott et al., 2004;
Earle and Seddon, 2000). As a novel material, DES has many ad-
vantages over the commonly used ionic liquids, which are biodegrad-
able, water-tolerant, non-flammable, non-toxic, less expensive, and
easier to prepare (Abbott et al., 2003; Abdullah and Kadhom, 2016).
Similar to ILs, DES can be designed according to the desired targets and
also expected to have surface activity. Therefore, DESs have been de-
veloped and used in several fields, such as separation, extraction, and
catalytic processes. Recently, the application of DESs have been in-
troduced in petroleum field which focus on enhance heavy oil recovery
(Mohsenzadeh et al., 2015). They investigated the effectiveness of
choline chloride-glycerol (1:2) and choline chloride - urea (1:2) on
several mechanism of heavy oil recovery such as emulsification, wett-
ability alteration, surface properties, and ultimately residual oil dis-
placement under reservoir conditions. The results indicate that both
DES have good potential to alter the wettability of the rock surface
which resulted in residual heavy oil recovery in around 14–30% after
water flooding. On the other hand, certain types of DES have been re-
garded as green electrolyte, such as choline chloride in combination
with ethylene glycol or glycerol (Cruz et al., 2017).
As several studies have ascertained that certain types of ILs could
improve the surface activity of surfactant in addition to other potential
characteristics of ILs and also DESs as ionic liquid-based novel material,
there is a good interest to introduce them to foam applications. They are
expected to also have potential to improve the surface properties of
foam, hence assisting surfactant to generate a stable foam with longer
life-time, thus some investigations are required to identify their cap-
abilities. Therefore, this research is aimed to address their favorable
properties to improve foam stability by experimentally employing dif-
ferent types of IL-based additives, followed by investigation on the ef-
fect of surfactant/IL formulation on foaming properties in the absence
of oil.
2. Materials and methods
2.1. Materials
An in-house surfactant named MFOMAX with 20% active content
supplied by PETRONAS Research Sdn. Bhd. (PRSB) were used as the
foaming agent. MFOMAX was composed of anionic and amphoteric
surfactants with a good solubility in aqueous phase. Four different types
of ionic liquid were used as additives with details listed in Table 1. The
molecular structure of each IL is depicted in Fig. 1. All sample solutions
were prepared in synthetic brine with 2 wt.% salinity (density 1.011 g/
cm3 and viscosity 1.036 mPa.s at ambient conditions) which contained
sodium chloride (NaCl, Merck) and calcium chloride (CaCl2, R&M) with
mass fraction of 95% and 5%, respectively. To prepare different mixture
solutions of surfactant and IL, the concentration of surfactant was fixed
based on the concentration screening result and the concentration of
A.S. Hanamertani et al.
Table 1
Ionic liquid-based additives.
No. Ionic liquid Name Code MW (g/
mol)
1. 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium bis IL-3 419.36
(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide, [C4mim][NTf2]
2. 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium hexafluorophosphate, IL-5 284.19
[C4mim][PF6]
3. Choline Chloride - ethylene glycol (Ethaline) IL-12 87.92
4. Choline Chloride - glycerol (Glyceline) IL-14 107.94
ionic liquid was varied based on surfactant to IL mass ratio in the
mixture solutions ranging from 90:10 to 60:40.
2.2. Experimental procedures
Prior to bulk foam experiments, the critical micelle concentration
(CMC) of surfactants was initially determined by measuring surface
tension of different concentration of surfactant solutions against air
using a contact angle measuring device, OCA-20 (Dataphysics). The
measurements were performed at temperature of 25 °C and at ambient
pressure. The measuring method was following pendant drop principle
which employed the Laplace-Young equation (Arashiro and
Demarquette, 1999; Berry et al., 2015). The measured surface tensions
were plotted as a function of surfactant concentration. The CMC point
was indicated as the concentration above which the surface tension of
surfactant solution was insignificantly changed and determined based
on the discontinuity point of surface tension reduction in the plot
(Demissie and Duraisamy, 2016; Myers, 2005b; Patist, 2002; Patist
et al., 2000).
The foaming properties of surfactant/IL mixtures were studied by
conducting bulk foam experiments at ambient conditions and at high
temperature, providing the measurement of foam decay over time. Bulk
foam experiment at ambient conditions was carried out as the first step
to investigate the effect of IL on the foaming properties of surfactant.
This experiment was also aimed to screen the formulated surfactant/IL
mixtures for further evaluation in foam experiments at high tempera-
ture. In this experiment, foam was generated using mixer (agitation
method) at ambient conditions. This method has been applied to in-
itially screen foam formulations due to its reliability and simplicity,
especially when large number of samples need to be tested (Duan et al.,
2004; Mannhardt et al., 2000; Sun et al., 2015; Xu et al., 2016a). The
volume of 50 ml of different surfactant/IL mixture solutions were agi-
tated at maximum speed for 60 s. After the agitation was stopped, the
foam height above the bulk liquid was immediately measured to de-
termine the foamability of each solution tested. The foam was then
carefully transferred to 100 ml graduated cylinder with diameter of
2.5 cm and height of 24 cm, to record the foam decay from the same set
point of foam height. The foam stability was investigated based on the
Fig. 1. Molecular structures of IL-based additives.
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Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 167 (2018) 192–201
reduction of the height of foam recorded in graduated cylinder as a
function of time. The time required to decrease the set foam height to
its half (foam half-life) was noted to indicate the foam stability. The
stability of foam generated with different surfactant concentrations was
initially measured to choose the surfactant concentration that was then
applied and kept constant for each mixture. The results from foam ex-
periment conducted on single surfactant solution were used as re-
ference or base case in order to evaluate the extent of ILs ability in
influencing the performance of surfactant in generating foam.
The second step was bulk foam experiments at high temperature
using Foamscan instrument, manufactured by Teclis Company. This
experiment was aimed to examine the screened samples from foam
experiments at ambient condition. To conduct the experiment, 60 ml of
tested solutions was initially prepared and then injected to the foam
column having inner diameter of ± 32 mm. The foam column was
layered by external jacket connected to the oil bath for controlling the
temperature. The experimental settings were made to evaluate the
foaming properties by applying selected protocol which was targeting
the final foam volume that should be reached at the end of foaming
process. For all experiments, the final foam volume was set at 150 ml
and the testing temperature was fixed at 90 °C. Foam was generated by
sparging nitrogen gas at fixed gas flow rate of 50 ml/min through
porous glass frit (≈40 μm) into the injected solution which was con-
trolled by the connected software. The gas sparging automatically
stopped right after reaching the preset foam volume. The schematic
diagram of Foamscan instrument was shown in Fig. 2.
Foam volume was determined using Charged-Coupled Device (CCD)
camera based on the black and white contrast produced by quantifying
the gray level. The gray level was corresponding with the light source
directed to the foam column which could differentiate the light and
dark part due to the foam presence. This device measured the foam
volume generated during gas sparging and recorded foam decay profile
over time right after foam generation. Foam measurements were
stopped few minutes after reaching foam half-life. The amount of liquid
used to generate foam and retained in the foam was recorded based on
the electrical conductance measured by the pairs of electrodes which
were attached to the foam column at four different positions above the
injected liquid level. The acquired data was plotted against time to get
the liquid drainage trend.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Critical micelle concentration (CMC) of surfactant
Surfactants have specific property called CMC which indicates the
formation of micelles after the interface has been completely saturated
with surfactant molecules (Rosen and Kunjappu, 2012). In this study,
surfactant concentration applied was ensured to be above CMC. It is
because the organized surfactant molecules can be formed within the
lamellae at concentration above CMC whereby the optimum surface
A.S. Hanamertani et al. Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 167 (2018) 192–201

Fig. 2. Schematic diagram of Foamscan instrument (Simjoo et al., 2013).

3.2. Surfactant concentration screening

Surfactant concentration screening was performed to determine the

Fig. 3. Surface tension for MFOMAX solution prepared in deionized water and
in 2 wt.% salinity brine as a function of concentration.
adequate concentration to be used in further investigations. The
changes in surfactant concentration has great influence on foam gen-
eration ability. In the use of particular surfactant, foam can be formed
even below the critical micelle concentration (CMC) both in bulk and
porous media (Kahrobaei et al., 2017; Mannhardt and Svorstøl, 2001;
Vikingstad et al., 2005). However, the foam generation is significantly
slower and the foam propagation is more difficult (Kahrobaei et al.,
2017; Mannhardt and Svorstøl, 2001). In EOR foam application, most
commonly, surfactant concentrations applied are in the range of
0.1–1 wt.% (Mannhardt and Svorstøl, 2001). Therefore, the foaming
properties of MFOMAX was initially evaluated at concentration of
0.1 wt.%, 0.5 wt.%, and 1 wt.%. From Fig. 4, it can be summarized that
an increase in surfactant concentration was able to produce more foam,
indicated by increasing foam height generated. However, in the use of
this type of surfactant, the foam stability decreases with increasing
surfactant concentration as indicated by the reduction of foam half-life.
Foam half-life at concentration of 0.5 wt.% and 1 wt.% were almost the

activity has been reached (Pugh, 2002). Surfactant molecules dis-

tribution at the interface also plays an important role in stabilizing
foam lamellae. Moreover, concentration exceeding the CMC is also re-
quired for foam to propagate in porous media (Mannhardt and Svorstøl,
2001). Therefore, it is necessary to determine the CMC of surfactant as a
basis for applying the concentration in further investigations. The graph
of solution/air surface tension as a function of surfactant concentration
is presented in Fig. 3, wherein the CMC is identified at the intersection
point of two linear regimes below and above that value. The CMC of
MFOMAX was found to be 0.035 wt.% and 0.02 wt.%, when prepared in
deionized water and in brine, respectively. The presence of salts ion
from brine lowered the CMC of surfactant due to an increase in coun-
terions interactions with surfactant head groups which induces the
formation of organized structures at the interface leading to faster
formation of micelles in bulk solution (Wan and Poon, 1969). The si-
milar behavior in saline condition has also been reported on some
previous studies for certain types of surfactant (Casteel and Djabbarah,
1988; Farajzadeh et al., 2008; Mannhardt and Svorstøl, 2001; Noll,
1991; Pandey et al., 2003). Fig. 4. Foam stability and foamability of MFOMAX solution at different con-
centrations.

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A.S. Hanamertani et al. Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 167 (2018) 192–201

same which was only half of the half-life achieved by the surfactant
concentration at 0.1 wt.%.
The inverse trend of foam height produced and foam half-life shows
that foamability is not necessarily correlated to foam stability. It is
because foamability is highly dependent on the energy supplied to the
solution system for the generation of foam and this is a critical factor
during foam generation (Sarkar and Singh, 2016). Foam stability, on
the other hand, is related to the time taken by foam, after being gen-
erated, to collapse due to the foam surface properties at the gas-liquid
interface, where the foam half-life measurement is the common as-
sessment method in any bulk foam stability tests (Ross, 1946). It can be
concluded that concentration of 0.1 wt.% was sufficient to possess re-
latively high foam stability compared to other much higher con-
centrations. Thus, this concentration was fixed for the optimum sur-
factant concentration for further investigations.
Fig. 6. Foam half-life exhibited by MFOMAX/IL mixtures solutions with dif-
3.3. Effect of ILs as additives on surfactant foaming properties at ambient ferent types of IL and at different ratios.
conditions
influence on the surface activity than other ILs additives. However, this
In order to identify the capability of ILs as surfactant-foam additives early indication on ILs performances should also be reviewed in tandem
in affecting foam generation and stability, different types of IL were with foam stability results.
tested in varying surfactant/IL mass ratio in solutions ranging from
90:10 to 60:40. The foaming properties of MFOMAX surfactant was
referred as a base case. The foam height produced from each mixture is 3.3.2. Foam stability in the presence of ILs
plotted over different ratios in Fig. 5 and their foam stability is pre- Based on the results obtained, not all ILs improved foam stability. It
sented in Fig. 6. can be seen from Fig. 6, the effect of ILs on foam stability depends on
the type of ILs and its formulated ratio with surfactant. An improve-
ment on foam stability was given by the mixture solutions containing
3.3.1. Foamability in the presence of ILs
IL-3, IL-12, and IL-14, while the presence of IL-5 did not positively af-
From Fig. 5, it can be observed that an increase in foamability of
fect the foam stability. A significant increase in foam half-life was
MFOMAX was noticed with the addition of all four ILs, even at low
shown by MFOMAX/IL-3 at 90:10 ratio, however, the foam half-life
concentration of ILs which was at ratio of 90:10. However, further
decreased with increasing IL content in the solution up to 60:40 ratio.
addition of each IL shows dissimilar effect. The presence of IL-5 and IL-
At 60:40 ratio, the stability of MFOMAX/IL-3 foam is almost the same
14 in surfactant solution increased foamability only at ratio of 90:10
as the base case. The high molecular weight of IL-3 might contribute to
and further increase in their concentration did not show any changes in
this result as it has been reported that an improvement on foam stability
foam volume generated. This shows that as additives, IL-5 and IL-14 can
only requires relatively low concentration of additive which has high
improve the foaming ability of MFOMAX, regardless of their con-
molecular weight (Zhu et al., 1998). The increase in IL-3 content as the
centrations. The addition of IL-5 gave the most prominent effect on
heaviest IL used, however, may have contributed to faster liquid drai-
surfactant foamability by having the greatest foam height in compar-
nage in the lamellae, thus the decreasing stability with increasing IL-3
ison to other ILs whereas IL-14 exhibited the lowest at any ratio. IL-3
was observed. In contrast to its superior ability to improve foamability,
and IL-12 exhibited moderate improvement on foamability where the
IL-5 did not enhance the foam stability. It has even shown an un-
pronounced effect was only found at mixture ratio of 60:40 and 70:30,
satisfied and inconsistent half-life with increasing its concentration on
respectively. Over all, the ability to improve foamability was found to
mixture solution. This could be affected by a different type of anion
be better for IL-3 and IL-5. As foamability is dependent on the surface
possessed by IL-5, compared to IL-3. The hexafluorophosphate anion
activity of surfactant molecules at the gas/liquid interface during foam
([PF6]) is symmetrical in shape hence its charge is symmetrically de-
generation, this improvement indicates that IL-3 and IL-5 have higher
localized as compared to bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide ([NTf2])
which is lower symmetric anion (Jodry and Mikami, 2007). The dif-
ferent charge distribution established by the anions of these two similar
cation-containing ILs may have influenced their interaction with the
surfactant molecules, hence the micellar arrangement in the lamellae.
The presence of flexible and large anions such as [NTf2], for instance,
along with charge-delocalized immidazolium cations, is able to adopt
different conformations which allow them to interact in similar strength
with different counterions which, in this case, are from surfactant
molecules (Shimizu et al., 2014). The cationic moieties from surfactant
form ion pairs with the counteranions from IL-3 ([NTf2]) which can
undergo associations to eventually form mixed micelles (Li et al., 2009).
However, the anions from IL-5 ([PF6]) have fewer tendencies to interact
with counterions from surfactant molecules, hence less number of ag-
gregation which can be generated (Behera et al., 2007; Sharma and
Mahajan, 2014). The ability of both surfactant and IL molecules to
generate aggregation or mixed micelles indicate the formation of mixed
molecules arrangement at the interface has been achieved. This mole-
cules arrangement in turns affect the lamellae resistance to coalescence
Fig. 5. Foam height produced with the mixture of surfactant and different types process and foam stability (Nguyen et al., 2016; Pugh, 2002; Wang
of IL at different mixture ratios. et al., 2016).

196
A.S. Hanamertani et al.
The use of IL-12 and IL-14 as additives could prolong the half-life of
MFOMAX foam and their maximum effect was observed at higher
concentrations generally in the 60:40 ratio with foam half-life reaching
80 and 72 h, respectively. Their ability to stabilize the foam might be
due to the fact that other than the ionic interactions, there are also
hydrogen bonds formed between the surfactant and DESs which also
contributes to their molecules adsorption at air/solution interface. The
formation of hydrogen bonds between neighboring molecules, surfac-
tant and DES in this case, provides attractive interactions that can
produce tighter packing of the adsorbed molecules and restrict surfac-
tant molecules to mobile while maintaining the lamellae stability
(Stubenrauch et al., 2017; Wu et al., 2011). This leads to enhancement
in foam stability as measured experimentally. An increase in foam
stabilization effect with DESs concentration could be induced by in-
creasing number of hydrogen bond produced.
In conclusion, IL-3, IL-12, and IL-14 were considerably able to
perform as foam additives as they have more tendency to withstand
lamellae breaking for longer period. However, in the use of IL-12 and
IL-14, their higher concentration in MFOMAX/IL mixture was required
to induce a favorable foam stability. Furthermore, each ILs on the
mixture system gave different trend on influencing foamability and
foam stability. Despite possessing higher foamability, it may not con-
tribute to increasing foam stability which is critical in foam application.
Some studies have reported the same behavior where foamability is not
always proportionally correlated to foam stability (Kim et al., 1996;
Saulnier et al., 2014; Xu et al., 2016b). Considering the foaming
properties of surfactant in the presence of each IL and also taking into
account the ratio of mixture solutions, some formulations were selected
to be further examined at high temperature. In terms of foamability, the
presence of all four ILs exhibited the improvement at 90:10 ratio and
further addition of IL-3 and IL-12 obtained the highest result at ratio of
60:40 and 70:30, respectively. Among all ILs, IL-5 exhibited the best
performance on foamability, however, worst on foam stability. Conse-
quently, IL-5 was not selected for further investigations. The addition of
IL-3 has shown an optimum improvement on foam stability at mixture
ratio of 90:10, while IL-12 and IL-14 at ratio of 60:40. Thus, the mixture
of MFOMAX respectively with IL-3, IL-12, and IL-14 at three ratios i.e.
90:10, 70:30, and 60:40 were selected for further investigation on their
capabilities as foam additives at high temperature.
3.4. Foam stability evaluation for selected surfactant/IL formulations at
high temperature
Fig. 7 shows the foam volume recorded over time at high tem-
perature for all selected formulations obtained from the screening at
ambient conditions including the base case. Since the gas flow auto-
matically stopped after foam volume reached 150 ml, half-life of foam
generated was determined when foam volume reached 75 ml. It was
noticed from the figure that the fastest foam decay was observed for
MFOMAX foam. As a base case, the half-life of MFOMAX foam was
found to be 468 s. In general, based on the results obtained at 90 °C, the
stability of MFOMAX foam in the presence of each IL was improved
with increasing IL concentration in mixture solution. This is noticed
from the graph which shows that an increase in mixture ratio from
100:0 to 60:40 slows down the foam decay for all cases. Other than this,
the foam volume generated by all solutions was observed to im-
mediately decrease after foam generation stopped. Within the first
200 s, foam collapse was dominantly affected by gravity drainage,
showing the prominent effect of high temperature on the rate of liquid
drainage, which is consistent with other studies (Stubenrauch et al.,
2009; Weaire et al., 2007). It was then immediately followed by foam
coarsening and coalescence phenomena whereby the lamellae strength
created by each formulation play a role in slowering both processes
(Tcholakova et al., 2011).
From Fig. 7(a), it can be concluded that the addition of IL-3 could
increase MFOMAX foam half-life by factor of 1.3–1.6 within the range
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Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 167 (2018) 192–201
of mixture ratio of 90:10 to 60:40. This increment might be induced by
the interaction between IL-3 and MFOMAX at the gas/liquid interface
through electrostatic attraction between the head groups and hydro-
phobic interactions between the tail groups. In this case, the highest
half-life achieved was 676 s by MFOMAX/IL-3 mixture at 60:40 ratio.
On the other hand, from Fig. 7(b), it can be seen that the addition of IL-
12 also could improve the stability of MFOMAX foam by showing more
prolonged foam decay compared to the base case. The foam half-life
was 636, 654, and 662 s at mixture ratio of 90:10, 70:30, and 60:40,
respectively. Compared to the performance of IL-3, IL-12 could provide
a better longevity for the foam generated at 90:10 and 70:30 ratio, but
almost the same at 60:40 ratio. A comparable result was shown for IL-
14 application in Fig. 7(c) where an increase in IL-14 concentration
could lengthen the half-life of MFOMAX foam dramatically. The addi-
tion of lower concentration of IL-14 noticeably increased the foam half-
life at elevated temperature, hence even longer than that in the pre-
sence of IL-3 and IL-12 at any ratio. Surprisingly, at 60:40 ratio of
MFOMAX/IL-14 mixture, the foam stability was found to be more than
two times higher than the MFOMAX foam stability whereby the in-
crement was from 417 to 985 s. Of all three ratios tested, the highest
performance was given at 60:40 ratio for all ILs cases.
Comparison of the effect of IL-3, IL-12, and IL-14 presence at 60:40
surfactant/IL mixture ratio on foam stability is presented in Fig. 8. It is
clear from the foam decay profiles that the extent of the increment in
foam stability is dependent on the type of IL used. It was observed that
MFOMAX/IL-14 foam has the most prolonged foam decay which its
foam half-life was 2.4 times higher than the half-life for the base case.
At high temperature, foam volume reduces rapidly without having
different foam decay regimes, however, the thin foam lamellae can still
be maintained for certain period after gravity drainage is complete. It
can also be seen from the graphs that the addition of each IL was able to
reduce the rate of foam coarsening and foam coalescence at high
temperature compared to the base case by showing the longer foam
decay. It has been suggested that at high temperature foam coarsening
and coalescence effect becomes significant after gravity drainage and
the coarsening phenomena is able induce further increase in drainage
rate, leading to fast foam rupture (Arnaud and Dominique, 2002;
Kapetas et al., 2016; Varade et al., 2011). Moreover, coarsening phe-
nomena takes place rapidly at high temperature because the gas flow in
foam system increases as temperature increases (Farajzadeh et al.,
2009). As experimentally observed, the addition of IL-14 is able to
slower down the foam coalescence and coarsening considerably more
than other ILs tested.
Foam half-life for all cases at 60:40 ratio are summarized in Fig. 9,
showing that MFOMAX/IL-3 and MFOMAX/IL-12 mixture produced
less stable foam with foam half-life of 676 and 662 s, respectively, and
MFOMAX/IL-14 foam has the highest stability with foam half-life of
985 s. Therefore, MFOMAX/IL-14 at 60:40 ratio was considered as the
best formulation exhibiting foam stability increment as much as 136%
of foam stability achieved by the formulation without IL.
As mentioned earlier, the role of ILs as foam additives is dependent
on the possible interactions produced between MFOMAX and IL at li-
quid/gas interface which lead to the stability of lamellae. This is ex-
pected from previous investigations which reported that IL can affect
the surfactant behavior at the interface including micellization process
through some mechanisms, such as hydrogen bonding formation, hy-
drophobic interactions, and electrostatic stabilization (Javadian et al.,
2013, 2014). The presence of IL in binary system was also reported to
alter the surface tension of individual surfactant solution (Comelles
et al., 2015). In this study, IL-3 which have the highest molecular
weight compare to others was basically able to generate greater inter-
actions with surfactant through electrostatic interaction between op-
positely charged head groups and hydrophobic interactions between
surfactant-IL tail groups (Javadian et al., 2014). This interaction in-
volves the cationic part of IL-3 (1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium), produ-
cing synergetic effect with MFOMAX surfactant at the interface to
A.S. Hanamertani et al.
Fig. 7. Foam decay profile at 90 °C as a function of time for (a) MFOMAX/IL-3 (b) MFOMAX/IL-12 (c) MFOMAX/IL-14 with different ratios selected from initial
screening.
Fig. 8. Comparison of foam volume decay over time for MFOMAX in the ab-
sence and presence of selected ILs at 60:40 ratio.
maintain thin film stability. However, the anion part of IL-3, [NTf2], has
nonpolar property which can cause difficulties for experiencing hy-
dration, therefore it could affect its solubility in bulk solution. Conse-
quently, after certain period of time, the adsorbed surfactant molecules
at the interface could not have sufficient interactions with IL molecules
leading to a low lamellae elasticity, hence, less stability of foam gen-
erated by MFOMAX/IL-3 mixture. Similar to IL-3, IL-12 and IL-14
which are also a form of electrolytes, have high tendency to produce
electrostatic interactions or cationic-anionic interactions with surfac-
tant leading to the decrease in surfactant head group repulsion at the
interface, thus maintain thin film stability. In addition to electrostatic
interactions, IL-12 and IL-14 could also exhibit hydrogen bonding with
MFOMAX as they have hydrogen bond donors (HBD) moieties which
were ethylene glycol and glycerol, respectively. This intermolecular
hydrogen bonding is considered as an effective supplementary
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Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 167 (2018) 192–201
Fig. 9. Half-life of MFOMAX foam in the absence and presence of selected ILs at
60:40 ratio and temperature of 90 °C.
contribution to increase the lamellae elasticity which leads to improved
stability of the foam (Deng et al., 2015; Wu et al., 2011). Since glycerol
from IL-14 molecule could donate more hydrogen bonds compared to
IL-12, IL-14 might have larger hydrogen bond networks with MFOMAX,
enhancing the molecules packing density at the interface which leads to
a higher surface viscosity. This phenomena could be attributed to a
much higher resistance of the lamellae against rupture thus a more
stable foam (Ranieri et al., 2018; Schellmann et al., 2015; Stubenrauch
et al., 2017). As a result, MFOMAX/IL-14 exhibited the highest foam
stability compared to other mixtures.
The liquid drainage profile recorded for the formulations discussed
is given in Fig. 10. The plot represents the liquid content in column
where initially high amount of liquid was used to generate foam, then
the liquid in the foam continuously drained, thus the amount of liquid
in the column collected increased over time until reaching certain
A.S. Hanamertani et al.
Fig. 10. Liquid volume remaining in column as a function of time for MFOMAX
in the absence and presence of selected ILs at 60:40 ratio.
volume. At this stage, foam became dry and contained a little amount of
liquid which resided in the lamellae. According to this result, the liquid
drainage of MFOMAX/IL-14 took a longer time to get back to initial
liquid volume used as compared to other mixtures. For MFOMAX and
MFOMAX mixture with IL-3 and IL-12, a significant reduction of liquid
drainage rate was taking place after 300 s, whereas, for MFOMAX/IL-14
after around 400 s. This result is consistent with the foam half-life re-
sult. Even though the effect of IL on the rate of liquid drainage was not
prominently noticed, in all cases, the gravity drainage was found to be
the dominating mechanism inducing rapid foam decay, similar to other
studies (Ahmed et al., 2017b; Carey and Stubenrauch, 2009; Simjoo
et al., 2013; Weaire et al., 2007). In particular, at high temperature,
foam system tends to experience faster liquid drainage until the la-
mellae becomes very thin whereby the disjoining pressure acting be-
tween the surfactant monolayers becomes crucial to maintain lamellae
stability (Aronson et al., 1994; Schulze-Schlarmann et al., 2006). An
increase in kinetic energy due to higher temperature affects surfactant
adsorption at solution/gas interface and its surface activity which ul-
timately influence the major contributing forces constructing disjoining
pressure, such as electrostatic, hydrophobic and steric forces (Alzahraa
et al., 2015; Danov et al., 1998; Gurkov et al., 1998).
For metastable foam, it is possible that the thin lamellae remain
stable for longer time after significant drainage. Therefore, the liquid
drainage does not always correspond to an overall foam stability
(Hilgenfeldt et al., 2001; Osei-Bonsu et al., 2017). Similar to the results
obtained, the liquid drainage took place within 300–400 s while their
foam half-life was greater than 400 s where at this stage the foam was
already dry. The gradual foam decay, in this condition, was dependent
on the types of supporting additives and was triggered by Ostwald ri-
pening and bubble coalescence phenomena (Gandolfo and Rosano,
1997; Vera and Durian, 2002). High temperature condition leads to
rapid gas diffusion through liquid phase causing bubbles dis-
proportionation, therefore, Ostwald ripening phenomena becomes re-
sponsible for the foam instability. This phenomena takes place until the
pressure difference between bubbles greatly reduced (Tadros, 2005).
This behavior is prominently different from the case at low tempera-
ture. At low temperature, there are three typical stages of foam decay.
In the initial stage after foam generation, foam undergoes rapid decay
for a short period, driven by the gravity drainage. Then, the foam be-
comes stable with very low decay rate for a certain period. At this stage,
gravity drainage still takes place which force the remaining liquid phase
in foam to flow and accumulate at Plateau border. Ultimately, the foam
experiences the second decay where the foam volume gradually de-
crease over a relatively long time span until the final volume is reached
(Simjoo et al., 2013). Based on this study, it is clear that at high tem-
perature, these three stages are merged into one stage where the foam
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Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 167 (2018) 192–201
volume continuously reduces affected by fast gravity drainage in
combination with Ostwald ripening, a change in foam texture due to
high pressure difference in the foam thin film and gas diffusion from the
smaller to the bigger bubbles. This results in the foam coarsening and
lamellae breakage, without experiencing foam stabilization stage for
certain period. This observation is in a good agreement with previous
foam stability studies at elevated temperature (Ahmed et al., 2017b;
Kam et al., 2003; Kapetas et al., 2016; Maini and Ma, 1986; Wang and
Li, 2014).
4. Conclusions
The application of ILs as additive for foam stabilization has been
introduced for the first time in this study. Bulk foam experiments were
performed to identify the foaming properties of surfactant in the ab-
sence and presence of different types of IL and also to screen the ef-
fective formulations exhibiting the highest foam stability. Foam ex-
periment at ambient conditions indicated that each IL have different
influence on foam stability depending on its molecular weight, struc-
ture, and mixture ratio with surfactant. Based on experiments at high
temperature, it was noticed that the foam volume of each mixture
spontaneously and continuously reduces due to fast gravity drainage in
combination with Ostwald ripening resulting in rapid foam coarsening
and lamellae breakage, without experiencing foam stabilization stage
for certain period. Compared to the base case, the selected ILs were
found to be able to improve surfactant foam stability up to different
extent and the ILs effect was more pronounced at surfactant/IL mixture
ratio of 60:40. At mixture ratio of 60:40, MFOMAX foam stability was
noticeably increased by 62%, 59%, and 136% for the use of IL-3, IL-12,
and IL-14, respectively. The effective formulation which have the
highest foam stability at high temperature was found to be MFOMAX/
IL-14 with 60:40 ratio. The synergistic effect between IL-14 and
MFOMAX through electrostatic interactions and excessive hydrogen
bonding network possibly contributed to a high molecules packing
density at the interface leading to stronger lamellae and higher foam
stability at elevated temperature. This study has provided strong in-
dication on the potential of ILs as additives for foam stabilization which
will be able to assist surfactant performance during foam mobility
control application.
Acknowledgments
Authors would like to acknowledge SHELL-UTP-TU-Delft colla-
boration project for providing the research funding under Grant No.
0153AB-DA3 and PETRONAS Research Sdn. Bhd. (PRSB) for supplying
the materials. Authors would also like to thank Centre of Research in
Enhanced Oil Recovery (COREOR), Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS for
the laboratory facilities and technical assistance.
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