Effect of ionic liquids in the dispersion of a Mexican heavy crude oil

The oil industry consists of a great diversity of stages such as the extraction, storage, transportation, and processing of crude oil. In particular, oil storage turns out to be an area of interest for research because this specific stage is complicated when heavy oils are treated. Thus, materials of the ionic liquid type have been used as modulators of the stability of water-oil emulsions to control these phenomena. This work monitored the stability of a Mexican heavy oil emulsified with sodium hydroxide and 200 ppm of imidazole-based-ionic liquids (ILs) for 55 days. The speed of particle migration and the emulsion stability was influenced in most cases by the alkyl chain length of the ILs; as the chain length increased, a rapid decrease was observed. The best results were obtained with the ILs 1-dodecyl 3-hexadecyl imidazole bromide and 1-tetradecyl 3-hexadecyl imidazole bromide, reaching a migration speed of 1.56 × 10−5 and 1.78 × 10−5 mm·min−1.