Abstract
Understanding of possible molecular interactions at liquid-liquid and solid-liquid interfaces can shed lights onto the nature’s design and authorise fine manipulation aptitude in biological, manufacturing, microfluidic and oil recovery applications. Of particular interest is the capability to control the aggregation of organic and biological macromolecules, which typically poses significant challenges for oil industry and human life, respectively. Following asphaltene aggregation phenomenon through π-stacking and hydrogen bonding interactions, asphaltene aggregates can form a thin layer at the crude oil-brine interface through noncovalent interactions such as -O-H···O hydrogen bonds and/or alter the wettability state of the solid surface from initially water-wet into mixed-oil wetting. Here, we probe the impact of water with variety of salinities and ion types on formation of water in oil micro-emulsions, asphaltene deposition, and induced water wettability transition at micro scale. For the first time we investigate the influence of water in oil micro-emulsions on asphaltene aggregation and deposition phenomena at elevated pressure and temperature conditions. We also monitor the micro-wettability alterations of gold surface of the QCM owing to ion valency/concentration changes using state of the art ESEM imaging facility. Our results depict that owing to the substitution of divalent cations with monovalent ones, asphaltene deposition is repelled and the solid surface becomes more hydrophilic, proposing a generalizable strategy to control wettability and an elucidation for the profitability of so-called low salinity water flooding, an enhanced oil recovery methodology. For the biological applications, this study provides insights into the potential roles of ions and hydrogen bonds in the protein deposition in tissues and self-assembly interactions and efficiency of drugs against protein aggregation drivers.
Highlights
These researchers inferred that the elasticity of the liquid–liquid interface to stability of microemulsions is owing to formation of interfacial thin layers from surface active species in the oil respect to the ion concentrations in the aqueous phase
Moradi and Alvarado[26] studied the influence of the temperature on the kinetics of asphaltene film formation. They inferred that the asphaltene particles move towards oil–water interface up to 2 times quicker when the temperature is increased from 25 °C to 50 °C at which the diffusion is one of the dominating drivers
Kazemzadeh et al.[27] investigated the effects of various test conditions such as pressure and water chemistry on emulsification. They observed that when the oleic phase, with more acidic matters rather than basic ones, is in contact with aqueous phase at acidic pH and high H+ environment, the polarity of asphaltene nanoaggregates can be raised which leads to further movement of asphaltenes towards the oil–water interface
Summary
Several researchers investigated crude oil–water interfacial rheology regarding the stability of water-in-oil (W/O) microemulsions as one of the drivers of water flooding induced recovery increment[14,15] These researchers inferred that the elasticity of the liquid–liquid interface to stability of microemulsions is owing to formation of interfacial thin layers from surface active species in the oil respect to the ion concentrations in the aqueous phase. Crude oil is co-produced with water during the water flooding processes which contains dissolved salts of sodium, potassium, calcium, and magnesium, in the case of LSWF In this regard, systematic investigation of asphaltene-brine interactions is of interest to build fundamental understanding of the role of brine in asphaltene deposition. Our study sheds light on the mechanisms underpinning LSWF and elucidates how large a role water molecule acts at fluid-solid interface
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