The HLD Study of Surfactant Partitioning for Oilfield Corrosion Inhibitors

The partitioning of corrosion inhibitor (CI) products is a measure of their potential to protect oilfield pipelines. In this paper the hydrophilic–lipophilic deviation (HLD) model is first used to quantify their partitioning in terms of the characteristic curvature ( C c,act ) of a series of anionic (alkoxylated phosphate esters) and cationic (alkoxylated amines, aromatic amines, imidazoline acetates and quaternary amines) actives. This parameter is expressed over a range of pHs within which pipeline corrosion occurs. The HLD model is next used to predict the partitioning of each active from water into toluene at increased salinities. Linear mixing rules are lastly used to predict the characteristic curvature of Product A ( C c,mix ) as a function of the C c,act of a subset of actives.