Terminal Group Effects on Demulsification Using Dendrimers

Abstract

Abstract Dendrimers are proposed and tested as demulsification reagents for recovering raw oil from oil–water emulsion, a common form of today's raw oil directly from mining. This design was based on the nanocontainer feature of dendrimers, which should “contain” natural surfactants existing in raw oil. The experimental results indicate that the key structural requirement for a dendrimer as a highly efficient demulsification reagent is that the surface free energy of the dendrimers should be similar to that of water, which disables its potential as a surfactant.