Demulsification is an aggressive phase-separation phenomenon of stable emulsions. Several studies have examined demulsification by chemical reactions using external stimuli, such as temperature variation, pH variation, and light irradiation. This study focused on the interfacial and emulsification properties of light-responsive surfactants because the use of light as an external stimulus is rel...

Water-in-crude oil emulsions are formed during petroleum production and asphaltenes play an important role in their stabilization. Demulsifiers are added to destabilize such emulsions,however the demulsification mechanism is not completely known. In this paper, the performances of commercial poly(ethylene oxide-b-propylene oxide) demulsifiers were studied using synthetic water-in-oil emulsions ...

The feasibility of indirect application of low frequency ultrasound for demulsification of crude oil was investigated without using chemical demulsifiers. Experiments were performed in an ultrasonic bath with frequency of 35 kHz. Synthetic emulsions with water content of 12%, 35% and 50% and median of droplet size distribution (DSD), median D(0.5), of 5, 10 and 25 μm were prepared from crude oi...

Abstract The complicated nature of crude oil emulsions is part the major setbacks associated with postulation methods for phase separation and demulsification in industry. Despite increasing efforts generating efficient dependable methods, majority cannot be shattered reduced times. This review examines trending techniques petroleum Several approaches have been examined to discover best method ...

Photoresponsive titania surfaces are of great interest due to their unique wettability change upon ultraviolet light illumination. However, their applications are often limited either by the inability to respond to visible light or the need for special treatment to recover the original wettability. Sensitizing TiO2 surfaces with visible light-absorbing materials has been utilized in photovoltai...

Droplet microfluidics can form and process millions of picoliter droplets with speed and ease, allowing the execution of huge numbers of biological reactions for high-throughput studies. However, at the conclusion of most experiments, the emulsions must be broken to recover and analyze their contents. This is usually achieved with demulsifiers, like perfluorooctanol and chloroform, which can in...

Emulsification of produced immiscible mixed liquid of oil and water is a problem frequently recognized in surface production facilities in oil fields. The formed emulsions are required to be demulsified to avoid the negative consequences on piping and processing equipment. Nowadays, chemical demulsification is a preferable method to avoid or retard emulsification during the process of oil treat...

Droplet-based microfluidics is increasingly used for biological applications, where the recovery of cells or particles after an experiment or assay is desirable. Here, we present an electro-demulsification chip which circumvents the use of harsh chemicals and multiple washing/centrifugation steps and offers a mild way for extracting cells and polymer particles into an aqueous phase from microfl...

Emulsion copolymerization of 2-(tert-butylamino)ethyl methacrylate in the presence of divinylbenzene (DVB) cross-linker and monomethoxy-capped poly(ethylene glycol) methacrylate (PEGMA) macromonomer at 70 °C afforded sterically-stabilized latexes at approximately 10% solids at pH 9. Dynamic light scattering and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) confirmed that relatively narrow size distributio...