 Derek
C. Dyson
Professor
Emeritus in Chemical Engineering
Research Interests:
- Interfacial Phenomena
- Enhanced Oil Recovery
Education:
- B.S. (1955) University of Cambridge
- Ph.D. (1966) University of London
Professor Dyson's interfacial studies focused on the application
of fundamental concepts to petroleum recovery.
Petroleum occurs naturally in the void spaces of porous rocks of
petroleum reservoirs. After conventional exploitation of most reservoirs,
a substantial fraction of the void spaces still contains oil that
is held in place by capillary forces. The small blobs of oil may
be mobilized by flushing the reservoirs with surfactant solutions,
although the effort required to mobilize the more recalcitrant blobs
is not economically justifiable.
Prof. Dyson studied the stability of blobs of oil in an oil-rock-water
or oil-rock solution system in order to obtain a better understanding
of the mechanics of mobilization of blobs. A single blob may have
several disjoint interfaces with the flooding (flushing) phase.
General results have been obtained that permit the prediction of
blob stability for isolated single-interface systems. Energy minimization
was the main theoretical method used. Application of the theory
required the development of geometrically simple models of the host
reservoir cavity.
Prof. Dyson also carried out fundamental studies on the spreading
of liquids on solid surfaces. He also modeled contact angle hysteresis
and disappearing contact angle hysteresis that occur on rough surfaces.
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