Two new ammonium-based poly(ionic liquid)s for breaking water-in-crude oil emulsions

Two new poly(ionic liquid)s (PILs) were synthesized, characterized, and applied in breaking water-in-oil (W/O) emulsions. For that, tetraethylene glycol (TG) was treated with thionyl chloride, obtaining dialkyl chloride (TC). TC was reacted with diamines 1,5-diaminopentane (AP) and 1,11-diaminoundecane (AU), forming the corresponding polyamines, TC-AP and TC-AU. Following this, TC-AP and TC-AU were quaternized with acetic acid (AA), producing poly(ionic liquid)s (PILs), TCAP-PIL, and TCAU-PIL, respectively. Chemical structures, thermal stability, surface activity, aggregation size, and zeta potential measurements were investigated using several techniques. In addition, their performance in breaking (PB) W/O emulsions in different ratios was investigated. TCAP-PIL and TCAU-PIL exhibited high PB at all ratios, while their performance improved as the crude oil ratio decreased. Moreover, TCAU-PIL showed higher PB than TCAP-PIL, which may be linked to the increased hydrophobicity of TCAU-PIL due to increased methylene units in the diamine chain compared to TCAP-PIL.

Automated summary

In this study, two new poly(ionic liquid)s (PILs) were synthesized and applied in breaking water-in-oil (W/O) emulsions. The chemical structures, thermal stability, surface activity, aggregation size, and zeta potential were investigated, showing that TCAU-PIL exhibited higher breaking performance compared to TCAP-PIL.