Structural Behavior of Isolated Asphaltene Molecules at the Oil–Water Interface

Asphaltenes are the heaviest component of crude oil, causing the formation of a stable oil–water emulsion. Even though asphaltenes are known to behave as an emulsifying agent for emulsion formation, their arrangement at the oil–water interface is poorly understood. We investigated the effect of asphaltene structure (island type vs archipelago type) and heteroatom type (Oxygen-O, Nitrogen-N, and Sulfur-S) on their structural behavior in the oil–water system. Out of six asphaltenes studied here, only three asphaltenes remain at the oil–water interface while others are soluble in the oil phase. Molecular orientation of asphaltene at the interface, position, and angle of asphaltene with the interface has also been determined. We observed that the N-based island type asphaltene is parallel, while the O-based island type asphaltene and N-based archipelago type are perpendicular to the interface. These asphaltene molecules are anchored at the interface by the heteroatom. The S-based asphaltenes (both island and archipelago type) and O-based archipelago type asphaltenes are soluble in the oil phase due to their inability to form a hydrogen bond with water and steric crowding near the heteroatom. This study will help in understanding the role of asphaltenes in oil–water emulsion formation based on its structure and how to avoid it

Methane Adsorption and Separation in Slipped and Functionalized Covalent Organic Frameworks

Understanding atomic-level mechanisms of methane adsorption in nanoporous materials is of great importance to increase their methane storage capacity targeting energy sources with low carbon emission. In this work, we considered layered covalent organic frameworks (COFs) with low density and revealed the effect of slipping and chemical functionalization on their methane adsorption and separation properties. We performed grand canonical Monte Carlo simulations studies of methane (CH₄) adsorption and carbon-dioxide:methane (CO₂:CH₄) separation in various slipped structures of TpPa1, TpBD, PI-COFs, and functionalized TpPa1 and TpBD COFs as well. We observed that the slipping improves the total CH₄ uptake by 1.1–1.5 times, while functionalization does not have a significant effect on CH₄ uptake. We also observed improvement in CO₂:CH₄ selectivity due to slipping, whereas functionalization results in decrease in the selectivity. In all considered COFs, we found the highest CH₄ delivery capacity of 141 cm³ (STP) cm^–3 at 65 bar and selectivity of ∼25 at 1 bar in 60-AB slipped structure of TpBD COF. We analyzed the molecular details of CH₄ adsorption using binding energy, heat of adsorption, pore characteristics, and expectation energy landscape. Our results show that COFs with increasing profile of heat of adsorption with pressure have the higher CH₄ delivery capacity. In these COFs, we found proximity (∼4–6 Å) of CH₄ binding sites, resulting in higher CH₄–CH₄ interactions and hence the increasing profile of CH₄ heat of adsorption