We investigated the influence of catalytic aquathermolysis on the composition changes of Ashal'cha heavy oil. The synergetic effect of organic solvent and an oil-soluble catalyst leads to deep conversion of resins into light components. Composition changes of resins and asphaltenes before and after aquathermolysis were investigated by proton nuclear magnetic resonance ( 1 H NMR), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry (MALDI MS), and elemental analysis. It was shown that iron(III) tris(acetylacetonate) forms magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) during aquathermolysis of heavy oil without any addition of surfactants. Composition of MNPs was determined as a mixture of hematite, magnetite, and maghemite. It turns out that obtained MNPs possess superparamagnetic properties of single-domain nanoparticles.
Amphiphilic thiacalix[4]arene functionalized with guanidinium groups forms stable solid lipid nanoparticles (SLNs) with high binding affinity to double-stranded DNA.An amphiphilic thiacalix[4]arene derivative functionalized with guanidinium groups forms stable solid lipid nanoparticles with high ζ-potential in water. Applying gel electrophoresis and fluorescent spectroscopy methods shows that the SLNs have high binding affinity to doublestranded DNA, but despite this fact, we have not observe any significant transfection activity toward three different mammalian cell lines. UV-spectroscopy study reveals that interaction between the SLNs and polynucleotide leads to partial denaturation of the DNA located on the surface of nanoparticles that can hinder transfection.
Enhancing heavy oil recovery is attracting a considerable interest due to the depletion of conventional oil resources. In fact, thermal enhanced oil recovery methods are presenting a potential impact on improving heavy oil recovery especially for terrigenous reservoirs, where they are able to increase oil mobility due to heating (steam and thermal exposure) or due to its in-situ conversion to light fractions during ignition of the reservoir. At the same time, it is worthy to note that steam-thermal methods are accompanied by a significant heat loss when injecting steam into great depths heat. Moreover, oil deposits in heterogeneous low-permeability reservoirs (for example, carbonate) are among the potential unconventional oil resources. Along with geological heterogeneity, low porosity and permeability, fracturing, these reservoirs contain, in most cases, heavy oils with a high content of resins, asphaltenes and hard paraffins, characterized by a non-Newtonian fluid property. All this taken together makes the extraction of oil from such reservoirs a hard task to implement.
In this study, we investigated the influence of iron pentacarbonyl, as oil-soluble catalyst precursor, on aquathermolysis of heavy oil of the Ashal'cha field. We estimated catalytic properties by applying SARA and elemental analysis, measuring viscosity, as well as evaluating changes in molecular weight distribution of high molecular weight components of the oil. It was found that presence of iron pentacarbonyl leads to an improvement of oil properties, resulting in decrasing of average molecular weight of resin fraction. It was shown that iron pentacarbonyl forms magnetic nanoparticles consisting of magnetite and pyrrhotite during the steam treatment of heavy oil. The properties of magnetic nanoparticles by various physical and physicochemical methods were also studied.
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