In enhanced oil recovery wettability plays an important role as that determines the interactions between the solid (rock) and the liquids in the reservoirs (crude oil, brine). Wettability has been recognized as one of the key parameters controlling the remaining oil-in-place.
Wettability is the preference of a liquid to be in contact with a solid surrounded by another fluid (liquid or gas). Depending on the application, wettability can be wanted or not.
Graphene oxide (GO) is the oxidized form of graphene. Graphene oxide is easy to process since it is dispersible in water and other solvents. Due to the oxygen in its lattice graphene oxide is not conductive, but it can be reduced to graphene by chemical methods.
A self-cleaning surface is any surface with the ability to readily remove any dirt or bacteria on it. Self-cleaning surfaces can be divided into three different categories; superhydrophilic, photocatalytic and superhydrophobic.
In industry, wettability is important for example when manufacturing electronics or when planning how to extract oil from the oil reservoir. In all these applications, knowing the contact angle value gives a strong indication on the performance of the product or a successfulness of the process.
The new standard IEC 62961 for the transformer oil quality testing has just been released. In this blog post, the main differences between the old ASTM D971 and the new IEC 62961 standard are discussed.
Contact angle hysteresis can be measured with optical (needle and tilting methods) and force (Wilhelmy method) tensiometers.
Interfacial tension of insulating liquids against water has been used for a long time as a criterion for aging evaluation. The latest revision for the ASTM D971 standard dates back to 2012. The new IEC standard is about the be released to improve the accuracy of the method.
Contact angle hysteresis (CAH) is an important physical phenomenon. When you look through the window on a rainy day, you have probably noticed that some of the water droplets stick to the glass even though gravity is pulling them down. The phenomenon can be explained by contact angle hysteresis.