DMSO-accelerated rapid gelation of crude oils at room temperature

Dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), carrying a highly polarized S = O bond as the H-bond acceptor, possesses an extraordinarily high capacity to compete for H-bond formation. This strongly H-bonding character renders DMSO with a strong ability to interfere with or even disrupt self-assembled structures mediated predominantly by intermolecular H-bonds. While this might be quite disturbing in many applications, in this study, we show that oil gelation actually could benefit significantly from DMSO’s such a strong H-bond-breaking ability. More specifically, we found that use of a minute but optimized amount of DMSO, assisted further by polar acetonitrile of a suitable amount, weakens the H-bonds in the gelling network formed by organogelators to a just right extent so as to allow for a faster disassembly-reassembly of fibers in the wetted powder gelator in oil and subsequent occurrence of rapid room-temperature gelation of both light and heavy crude oils of widely ranging viscosities within 6–25 mins at gelator loadings of ≤12% w/v.