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

ABSTRACTTwo 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.KEYWORDS: Poly(ionic liquid)sdemulsificationwater-in-crude oil emulsion AcknowledgmentsThe authors acknowledge the financial support through Researchers Supporting Project number (RSPD2023R688), King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.Disclosure statementThe authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.Additional informationFundingThe authors acknowledge the financial support through Research Supporting Project number (RSPD2023R688), King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.