Porous media, Surfactants, and Petrodollars

I will provide and overview of some ongoing work, commisioned by Schlumberger Cambridge Research, to investigate the flow of oil/water/surfactant mixtures in porous media. To do this we have adapted our lattice Boltzmann code to address a number of relevant issues; I will describe how some of these are handled. The adjustment of wetting properties in the presence of surfactant is to be yet to be investigated. The presence of surfactants in the mixture may have an impact on how efficiently one can extract oil from rock operationally, and ultimately the number of petrodollars we get paid for this work.