One-Pot Synthesis of Amphipathic Esters for Demulsification of Water-in-Crude Oil Emulsions

Abstract

The current work aims to synthesize new amphipathic compounds, TGHA and PGHA, and investigate their demulsification performance (DP) in water-in-crude oil emulsions. Their chemical structures, thermal stability, interfacial activity, and micelle formation were investigated by different techniques. The bottle test method was used to investigate the effect of demulsifier concentration, water content, temperature, and demulsification time (DT) on the DP of TGHA and PGHA compared to a commercial demulsifier (CD). The results indicated that these parameters have a noticeable impact on the DP of TGHA and PGHA. The results also showed that TGHA exhibited higher DP than PGHA at all investigated parameters, which could be explained by increasing its hydrophobicity due to lower oxyethylene units in its structure than PGHA. An increase in these units means increased hydrophilicity, which led to obstruction of PGHA molecule diffusion in crude oil as a continuous phase. Moreover, TGHA gave a comparable DP with CD, as it gave a higher DP and shorter DT than CD at a higher water content (50%), while the latter achieved the highest DP and the shortest DT at a low water content (10%).