Experimental Study of the Effect of Strong Alkali on Lowering the Interfacial Tension of Oil/Heavy Alkylbenzene Sulfonates System

Experimental studies were conducted to explore the fundamental mechanisms of alkali to lower the interfacial tension of oil/heavy alkylbenzene sulfonates （HABS） system. Sodium hydroxide was used as the strong alkali chemical to investigate the interracial tension （IFT） of oil/HABS system. The influences of salt and alkali on the interracial activity were studied by the measurement of interfacial tension and partition coefficient. Moreover, the al- kali/surfactant solutions were measured by dynamic laser scattering. The results showed that compared with the salt, the function of alkali to lower the interfacial tension and improve partition coefficient is more significant. The mi- celles formed by surfactants could be disaggregated because of adding alkali, so the size of micelles decreases and the number of mono-surfactants increases, then more surfactant molecules move to the interface of oil/surfactant system and the adsorption of surfactants at oil-water interfaces increases, which can lead to the decrease of IFT.