AmericanChemicalSociety.com

Demulsification of water-in-oil emulsion is an important issue in petroleum production. The current practice often relies on heavy usage of chemical demulsifiers, which are consumable, environmentally unfriendly, and prone to interfere with subsequent processes. In this project, we explore the demulsification of water-in-oil emulsion using hydrophilic nanofibres implanted on hydrophobic surfaces. The working mechanism is inspired by amphiphilic copolymers, a type of chemical demulsifiers previously proven to be effective.

 During the first year of our project, our research effort has been devoted to two aspects. One is the nano-planting process, which can immobilize 1D nanoparticles, such as carbon nanotubes (CNTs) on the surface. We have identified high voltage electrophoretic deposition (HV-EPD) as the method to do so and successfully demonstrated that CNTs can be vertically aligned on the substrate with this IC-compatible process under room temperature. This capability is demonstrated by using the vertically aligned CNTs as a microsupercapacitor. A conference paper has been accepted by PowerMEMS 2009. This process will be further explored to identify proper material for the hydrophilic nanofiber and hydrophobic substrate surface to provide the sample for demulsification testing. On the other hand, superhydrophilic treatments are explored to modify the surface property of potentially material for hydrophilic nanofiber. Plasma treatment of polyester has been demonstrated to generate a superhydrophilic surface with anti-fogging capability. The results have been published in a conference proceeding of IEEE-NEMS 09. We are well positioned to start the second year of the project and look forward to examine the proposed mechanism in the near future.