Advances of spontaneous emulsification and its important applications in enhanced oil recovery process

Emulsions, including oil-in-water (O/W) and water-in-oil (W/O) emulsions, can play important roles in both controlling reservoir conformance and displacing residual oil for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) projects. However, current methods, like high-shear mixing, high-pressure homogenizing, sonicators and others, often use lots of extra energy to prepare the emulsions with high costs but very low energy efficiency. In recent decades, spontaneous...