Preparation of oxidized carbon black grafted with nanoscale silica and its demulsification performance in water-in-oil emulsion

In order to reduce the cost of demulsifiers and improve the demulsification performance of carbon material demulsifier, the nano-SiO2 was grafted onto the surface of oxidized carbon black (Ox-CB) by sol-gel method in current study. The novel composite demulsifier was analyzed by fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), field-emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM), energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) and X-ray diffraction spectra (XRD) which confirmed the partial grafting of SiO2 on the oxidized carbon black (Ox-CB).The influences of temperature, settling time, and concentration of the composite demulsifier on the efficiency for breaking up water-in-oil emulsions were investigated in detail by bottle test. It was found that the best operating conditions to remove more than 90% of the water from the original emulsion were a temperature of 75 degrees C and a demulsifier concentration of 500 mg/L. The wettability, oil-water interfacial tensions (IFT) and interfacial activity of the demulsifier were further measured to explore the demulsification mechanism. Possible demulsification mechanism showed that the composite demulsifier could lead to the breakup of water-in-oil emulsions by bridging, flocculation and coalescence. The high interfacial activity is the main factor affecting the demulsification.