Abstract

Surfactant adsorption onto reservoir rocks remains a critical challenge in chemical enhanced oil recovery (cEOR), as it directly impacts flooding efficiency and chemical costs. This study presents a comprehensive scientometric analysis of research on surfactant adsorption for EOR applications over the period 2005–2025. Based on the Scopus database, 877 publications accounting for more than 22,100 citations were retrieved and analyzed to map the intellectual and conceptual structure of this research field. VOSviewer 1.6.20 software was employed to generate keyword co-occurrence networks, author bibliographic coupling, and country-level contributions. The results reveal a strong growth in scientific output after 2016, with annual publications increasing from fewer than 30 papers per year before 2010 to more than 100 papers per year after 2021. “Enhanced Oil Recovery” (165 occurrences), “Adsorption” (101 occurrences), and “Surfactant” (88 occurrences) emerged as the most frequent and highly interconnected keywords. At the geographical level, China (29.4%), the United States (22.3%), and Iran (9.6%) were identified as the leading contributors, together accounting for more than 60% of the global research output. Bibliographic coupling analysis highlighted a core group of highly influential authors shaping the field through strong collaborative networks. Emerging themes such as nanoparticle-assisted EOR, wettability alteration, and low-salinity surfactant systems were identified as rapidly growing research frontiers. This scientometric analysis provides the first quantitative mapping dedicated specifically to adsorption phenomena in cEOR, while highlighting future opportunities for optimizing adsorption control strategies and improving reservoir performance.

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