Efficacy of Curcumin-based amphiphilic ionic liquids towards the demulsification of water-in-heavy crude oil emulsions

Over the past few decades, the use natural products and their derivatives as green chemicals in different applications has been increasing, due to these products' green character, wide availability, and renewability. Curcumin is a widely available and utilized natural compound, and in this work it was converted to potassium curcuminate, which was made to react with ethoxylated hexadecyl ammonium chloride (EHC) or ethoxylated octadecyl ammonium chloride (EOC) to produce the amphiphilic ionic liquids (AILs) ethoxylated hexadecylammonium curcuminate (EHC-IL) and ethoxylated octadecylammonium curcuminate (EOC-IL), respectively. The chemical structure, surface activity, relative solubility number, thermal stability, and dynamic light scattering of EHC-IL and EOC-IL were determined with different techniques. In addition, their efficiencies in the demulsification of emulsions of water in heavy crude oil were evaluated. Moreover, the factors affecting on the demulsification efficiency, including the effect of AIL concentration, water content, temperature, and salinity were also evaluated. Both compounds displayed high efficiency as demulsifiers with efficiency increasing with the demulsifier concentration, water content, and demulsification temperature. Furthermore, EHC-IL displayed higher efficiency and produced cleaner demulsified water than EOC-IL.