Imidazolium-based ionic liquids as dispersants to improve the stability of asphaltene in Egyptian heavy crude oil

Abstract

Deposition of asphaltene aggregates can easily depress the oil production, because it may clog the wellbores, annulus, pipelines, and surface facilities. Moreover, asphaltene molecules have a negative effect on the catalytic reactions in the refinery process. Therefore, in this work, three different ionic liquids (IL-H, IL-CH3, and IL-NO2) were synthesized, and characterized using FT-IR and NMR spectroscopy to evaluate their efficiency as asphaltene dispersants. The thermal gravimetric analysis of the prepared ILs showed that IL-H, IL-NO2, and IL-CH3 were thermally stable up to 280 °C. The ILs showed good dispersion activity of the petroleum asphaltenes, where the asphaltene onset precipitation (AOP) was changed from 7.5 to 10.5, 11, and 13.5 ml added n-heptane after the use of IL-H, IL-NO2, and IL-CH3, respectively. Moreover, the colloidal instability index of crude oil was changed from 0.92 (unstable asphaltene) to 0.69 (stable asphaltene). It is noted during the experiments that the presence of an alkyl chain attached to the ionic liquid moiety increases the efficiency of the dispersant. This may be owing to the formation of π–π* with asphaltene molecules due to the presence of electron donating group. Quantum chemical parameters were calculated for the prepared ILs, and the theoretical data confirmed the experimental results.

Evaluation of ionic liquids based imidazolium salts as an environmentally friendly corrosion inhibitors for carbon steel in HCl solutions

“…Therefore, ionic liquids (ILs) have emerged as essential eco-friendly and cost-effective inhibitors that have garnered significant interest from both the academic researchers and the engineers 19 – 21 . The leverage of ionic liquids in many applications including corrosion inhibitors is mostly related to their physical–chemical properties such as high solubility, non-toxicity, low volatility, non-flammable, synthesis without solvents with a high yield, no-electronic conductivity, high thermal stability 22 – 24 . Therefore, it was worthy to discuss additional significant properties that have been linked to corrosion inhibitors that are environmentally benign and safe in different media.…”

Research Progress in Nanoparticle Inhibitors for Crude Oil Asphaltene Deposition

“…The inhibitors based on ionic liquids exhibit remarkably low vapor pressure, a low melting point, excellent thermal stability, non-flammability, and favorable solubility in various solvents. However, the production scale and intricate synthesis mechanism of these ionic liquids render them more costly compared with commercially available asphaltene inhibitors [ 26 , 27 , 28 ]. Moreover, compared with traditional organic asphaltene inhibitors (such as sodium dodecyl benzene sulfonate and phenol), it has significant advantages.…”