Preparation and properties of modified nano-montmorillonite viscosity reducers

Abstract

The nanometer sodium montmorillonite (Na-MMT), hexadecyl trimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB), and octadecyl trimethyl sodium chloride (OTAC) were used as reaction monomers and ethanol as solvent, and two oil soluble viscosity reducers MMT-CTAB and MMT-OTAC were synthesized. Structural characterization experiment of modified montmorillonite were conducted by the infrared spectrometer, thermogravimetric analyzer, contact angle tester, scanning electron microscope, and dispersion observation. 20 wt% wax-containing model oil was chosen as the research object. The properties of two viscosity reducers on the pour point and viscosity of model oil were studied experimentally. The results showed that the two modified montmorillonite viscosity reducers were successfully prepared. And both can reduce the pour point and viscosity of model oil. The performance of MMT-OTAC was better than MMT-CTAB, which can reduce the pour point of model oil by 6 °C and the viscosity by 91.1%.

Graphical Abstract

Keywords:

• Nano-montmorillonite
• viscosity reducers
• structural characterization
• pour point
• viscosity

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the General Project of Natural Science Research in Jiangsu Universities (Grant No. 19KJB440001); the Postgraduate Research & Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province (Grant No. SJCX21_1209).