Session: Corrosion Inhibitors in the Oil and Gas Industry (Part I of III)
QCM-D Analysis of Surfactant Adsorption-Desorption Kinetics on Gold Sensors in CO2-Saturated Environments (C2026-00072)
Wednesday, March 18, 2026
2:00 PM - 2:30 PM Central
Location: 361 AB
Earn .5 PDH
Interested in reading the entire paper? Click on the "Paper" button below to read on the AMPP Knowledge Hub!
*Please note, if your registration came with access to the conference proceedings don't forget to login to your AMPP Knowledge Hub account to access the paper for free. If you login and don't have access to the paper, you can purchase the individual paper or purchase the entire conference proceedings on your Knowledge Hub account.
Ryan Abou-Shakra, Joshua Owen, Richard Woollam, William Durnie, Richard Barker
In recent years, the corrosion research community has shown growing interest in Quartz Crystal Microbalance with Dissipation (QCM-D), due to its ability to provide real-time, quantitative insights into the adsorption and desorption behavior of corrosion inhibitors, as well as the viscoelastic properties of inhibitor films. This study uses QCM-D and kinetic modeling to examine the adsorption/desorption characteristics and film structure of benzyl dimethyl tetradecylammonium chloride (BAC-C14) on gold-coated surfaces. Attention focuses on quantifying the interfacial behavior changes with surfactant concentration, from below to above the critical micelle concentration (CMC). Experiments were conducted on gold-coated sensors at 30ºC in CO2-saturated 1% sodium chloride (NaCl) brine using a once-through QCM-D micro-fluidic flow cell. Frequency shifts showed that adsorbed surfactant mass increases up to the CMC, then decreases at higher concentrations, suggesting micelle effects or film restructuring. Transitions from inhibited to uninhibited solutions allowed for the evaluation of surfactant desorption responses. By applying and fitting a first-order Langmuir model to the adsorption-dominated portion of the QCM data, adsorption and desorption kinetics constants (ka and kd) were extracted. This model also predicted the desorption response, which was then compared to the QCM-D experimental desorption profile.
