Application of Hydrophilic–Lipophilic Deviation Equations to the Formulation of a Mixed‐Surfactant Washing Agent for Crude Rice Bran Oil Removal from Spent Bleaching Earth

Current Research and Challenges in Bitumen Emulsion Manufacturing and Its Properties

The global increase of road infrastructure and its impact on the environment requires serious attention to develop sustainable and environmentally friendly road materials. One group of those materials is produced by using bitumen emulsion. However, there are still scientific and technical obstacles standing against its regular application. The bitumen emulsion formulation process and compositional optimization are subjected to a high number of degrees of freedom. Consequently, obtaining the desired product is mostly based on a series of random and tedious trials because of the enormous number of tests that are carried out to meet the required properties, such as emulsion stability, viscosity, droplet size (and distribution), and bitumen emulsion chemistry. Several pre-established formulation procedures have been presented in the literature. Some of them have technical limitations to be utilized for practical industrial application, whereas others are still not understood enough to be applied in bitumen emulsion formulation. Therefore, discussing some important issues in this field could be useful to offer a practical guide for bitumen emulsion manufacturers when trying to formulate a well-defined bitumen emulsion to best fit its use in pavement infrastructure rather than to simply to meet standard specifications. This review paper aims to enable the ultimate potential of bitumen emulsion by further reviewing the research progress of bitumen emulsion manufacturing and discussing the literature available up to now on this topic, in the realm of bitumen emulsion manufacturing and emulsion chemistry.

Surfactants Enhanced Heavy Oil-Solid Separation from Carbonate Asphalt Rocks-Experiment and Molecular Dynamic Simulation

In this study, surfactants were used to enhance heavy oil-solid separation, and a detailed mechanism was explored by SARA (saturates, aromatics, resins, asphaltenes) analysis, element analysis, AFM measurement, and molecular dynamic simulation. Surfactants could effectively decrease oil/solid interaction force and then oil-solid separation would be enhanced. The oil-solid interactive force was in relation to surfactants concentration, pH value, asphaltene content, and salinity. The molecular dynamics simulation results show that the dissociation of saturated hydrocarbon, aromatic hydrocarbon, resin, and asphaltene (SARA) on carbonate minerals is gradually weakened for all surfactants. In the process of molecular dynamics simulation of surfactant stripping SARA, firstly, the surfactant molecules adsorb on the surface of SARA molecules. After that, the surfactant peels SARA molecules off the surface of calcite under the influence of molecular thermal motion. In this process, surfactant molecules will not be directly adsorbed on the surface of trace minerals. The results of energy/temperature balance indicated that saturates, aromatics and resins could remain stable when the molecular dynamics simulation time reached 2000 ps with the phenomenon that saturates, aromatics could liberate from minerals totally within 2000 ps. The molecular dynamics simulation of asphaltenes will not liberate from calcite surface within 6000 ps, meanwhile, they could not reach the energy balance/energy balance within 6000 ps. The functional groups of surfactant molecules would have interactions with the SARA functional group, resulting in different dissociation effects of SARA. The results of molecular dynamics simulation are consistent with the experiment results. The separation effect of saturated hydrocarbon, aromatic hydrocarbon, resin, and asphaltene in five kinds of surfactants were different. The molecular dynamic simulation results were in accordance with the SARA analysis.