Synergistic Interaction of Hyperbranched Polyglycerols and Cetyltrimethylammonium Bromide for Oil/Water Interfacial Tension Reduction: A Molecular Dynamics Study.

Applying surfactants to reduce the interfacial tension (IFT) on water/oil interfaces is a proven technique. The search for new surfactants and delivery strategies is an ongoing research area with applications in many fields such as drug delivery through nanoemulsions and enhanced oil recovery. Experimentally, the combination of hyperbranched polyglycerol (HPG) with cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) substantially reduced the observed IFT of oil/water interface, 0.9 mN/m, while HPG alone was 5.80 mN/m and CTAB alone IFT was 8.08 mN/m. Previous simulations in an aqueous solution showed that HPG is a surfactant carrier. Complementarily, in this work, we performed classical molecular dynamics simulations on combinations of CTAB and HPG with one aliphatic chain to investigate further the interaction of this pair in oil interfaces and propose the mechanism of IFT decrease. Basically, from our results, one can observe that the IFT reduction comes from a combination of effects that have not been observed for other dual systems: (i) Due to the CTAB-HPG strong interaction, a weakening of their specific and isolated interactions with the water and oil phases occurs. (ii) Aggregates enlarge the interfacial area, turning it into a less ordered interface. (iii) The spread of individual molecules charge profiles leads to the much lower interfacial tension observed with the CTAB+HPG systems.

Electronic Structure of Water from Koopmans-Compliant Functionals.

Obtaining a precise theoretical description of the spectral properties of liquid water poses challenges for both molecular dynamics (MD) and electronic structure methods. The lower computational cost of the Koopmans-compliant functionals with respect to Green's function methods allows the simulations of many MD trajectories, with a description close to the state-of-art quasi-particle self-consistent GW plus vertex corrections method (QSGW + fxc). Thus, we explore water spectral properties when different MD approaches are used, ranging from classical MD to first-principles MD, and including nuclear quantum effects. We have observed that different MD approaches lead to up to 1 eV change in the average band gap; thus, we focused on the band gap dependence with the geometrical properties of a system to explain such spread. We have evaluated the changes in the band gap due to variations in the intramolecular O-H bond distance and HOH angle, as well as the intermolecular hydrogen bond O···O distance and the OHO angles. We have observed that the dominant contribution comes from the O-H bond length; the O···O distance plays a secondary role, and the other geometrical properties do not significantly influence the gap. Furthermore, we analyze the electronic density of states (DOS), where the KIPZ functional shows good agreement with the DOS obtained with state-of-art approaches employing quasi-particle self-consistent GW plus vertex corrections. The O-H bond length also significantly influences the DOS. When nuclear quantum effects are considered, broadening of the peaks driven by the broader distribution of the O-H bond lengths is observed, leading to a closer agreement with the experimental photoemission spectra.

Improved oil recovery in nanopores: NanoIOR.

Fluid flow through minerals pores occurs in underground aquifers, oil and shale gas reservoirs. In this work, we explore water and oil flow through silica nanopores. Our objective is to model the displacement of water and oil through a nanopore to mimic the fluid infiltration on geological nanoporous media and the displacement of oil with and without previous contact with water by water flooding to emulate an improved oil recovery process at nanoscale (NanoIOR). We have observed a barrier-less infiltration of water and oil on the empty (vacuum) simulated 4 nm diameter nanopores. For the water displacement with oil, we have obtained a critical pressure of 600 atm for the oil infiltration, and after the flow was steady, a water layer was still adsorbed to the surface, thus, hindering the direct contact of the oil with the surface. In addition, oil displacement with water was assessed, with and without an adsorbed water layer (AWL). Without the AWL, the pressure needed for oil infiltration was 5000 atm, whereas, with the AWL the infiltration was observed for pressures as low as 10 atm. Hence, the infiltration is greatly affected by the AWL, significantly lowering the critical pressure for oil displacement.