Separating water‐in‐heavy oil (W/HO) emulsions at low (room) temperature is challenging when exploiting heavy oil. We propose an adaptable strategy for constructing Si/O‐doped demulsifiers. A nonionic demulsifier (APBMP) has been synthesized based on polysiloxane modified by allyl polyether and butyl acrylate. APBMP achieves 95.97% dehydration within 5 min for W/HO emulsions at 288.15 K and complete dehydration in 15 min at 323.15 K. Mechanistic studies found that doping Si/O into the demulsifier molecules increases the number of hydrogen bond sites, which enables the demulsifiers to quickly disperse natural stabilizers (e.g., asphaltenes) and replace them at the oil–water interfacial film. The demulsifiers prefer to occupy the interfacial sites rather than dissolve into the bulk oil or water phases. Driven by hydrogen‐bond‐dominated noncovalent interactions, the oil–water interfacial film is softened, reconstructed, and broken. These findings provide insights into developing novel materials for oil–water separations in a low‐carbon way.

中文翻译：

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掺杂 Si/O 以提高破乳剂的界面占有率，以实现重油中水乳液的低碳破碎


在开采重油时，在低温（室温）下分离重油中的水 （W/HO） 乳化液是一项挑战。我们提出了一种构建 Si/O 掺杂破乳剂的适应性策略。基于烯丙基聚醚和丙烯酸丁酯改性的聚硅氧烷合成了一种非离子破乳剂 （APBMP）。对于 W/HO 乳液，APBMP 在 288.15 K 下可在 5 分钟内实现 95.97% 的脱水，在 323.15 K 下可在 15 分钟内完全脱水。机理研究发现，将 Si/O 掺杂到破乳剂分子中会增加氢键位点的数量，这使得破乳剂能够快速分散天然稳定剂（例如沥青质）并在油水界面膜处取代它们。破乳剂喜欢占据界面位点，而不是溶解到本体油相或水相中。在氢键主导的非共价相互作用的驱动下，油-水界面膜被软化、重建和破坏。这些发现为以低碳方式开发用于油水分离的新型材料提供了见解。