Imidazolium-based ionic liquids as dispersants to improve the stability of asphaltene in Egyptian heavy crude oil

Deposition of asphaltene aggregates can easily depress the oil production, because it may clog the wellbores, annulus, pipelines, and surface facilities. Moreover, asphaltene molecules have a negative effect on the catalytic reactions in the refinery process. Therefore, in this work, three different ionic liquids (IL-H, IL-CH(3), and IL-NO(2)) were synthesized, and characterized using FT-IR and NMR spectroscopy to evaluate their efficiency as asphaltene dispersants. The thermal gravimetric analysis of the prepared ILs showed that IL-H, IL-NO(2), and IL-CH(3) were thermally stable up to 280 °C. The ILs showed good dispersion activity of the petroleum asphaltenes, where the asphaltene onset precipitation (AOP) was changed from 7.5 to 10.5, 11, and 13.5 ml added n-heptane after the use of IL-H, IL-NO(2), and IL-CH(3), respectively. Moreover, the colloidal instability index of crude oil was changed from 0.92 (unstable asphaltene) to 0.69 (stable asphaltene). It is noted during the experiments that the presence of an alkyl chain attached to the ionic liquid moiety increases the efficiency of the dispersant. This may be owing to the formation of π–π(*) with asphaltene molecules due to the presence of electron donating group. Quantum chemical parameters were calculated for the prepared ILs, and the theoretical data confirmed the experimental results.