Putri Restu Dewati

27 Desember 2011

Master Student, Chemical Engineering Department, Gadjah Mada University

Research title:

Production of Methyl Ester Sulfonate (MES) from Jatropa Oil as Surfactant of EOR Processes (Enhanched Oil Recovery)

Research Outline:

         Most of oil wells in Indonesia was the old wells. The recent technology is not optimal enough to  exploiting the potential of petroleum. Only about 15% of Oil in Place can be recovered by primary method, 34% by secondary method and 33% by tertiary method.

         One of tertiary method is the using of surfactant in EOR (Enhanched Oil Recovery) processess. This  method is suitable to be applied to the old wells which  not in production but still  have high potential with a lot of oil content.

         With the increasing world wide attention to environmental issues, it is required a surfactant based of renewable resources, such as Methyl Ester Sulfonate (MES) that produce from vegetable oil . During this time, MES was produced from CPO that edible oil.

This research aims to produce surfactant that expected to avoid  new conflicts betweean food and energy. One of alternative solution of this problem is the manufacture of Methyl Ester Sulfonate from Jatropa Oil that non edible oil.

         The research steps include (i) The production of Methyl Ester from Jatropa Oil (ii) MES production processes, sulfonation of Methyl Ester with H2SO4, methanolisis and neutralization with NaOH solution (iii) Determination of optimum process condition of sulfonation (iv) MES test (FTIR and IFT).