Open AccessDemulsification of crude oil-in-water emulsions by means of fungal spores
Author(s) -
Alba Adriana Vallejo-Cardona,
Rafael MartínezPalou,
Benjamín Chávez-Gómez,
Graciela García-Caloca,
Jairo E Guerra-Camacho,
Ricardo CerónCamacho,
J. Reyes-Avila,
James Karamath,
Jorge Aburto
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0170985
Subject(s) - spore , emulsion , chemistry , chromatography , crude oil , petroleum , food science , biology , botany , biochemistry , organic chemistry , geology , petroleum engineering
The present feature describes for the first time the application of spores from Aspergillus sp . IMPMS7 to break out crude oil-in-water emulsions (O/W). The fungal spores were isolated from marine sediments polluted with petroleum hydrocarbons. The spores exhibited the ability to destabilize different O/W emulsions prepared with medium, heavy or extra-heavy Mexican crude oils with specific gravities between 10.1 and 21.2°API. The isolated fungal spores showed a high hydrophobic power of 89.3 ± 1.9% and with 2 g of spores per liter of emulsion, the half-life for emulsion destabilization was roughly 3.5 and 0.7 h for extra-heavy and medium crude oil, respectively. Then, the kinetics of water separation and the breaking of the O/W emulsion prepared with heavy oil through a spectrofluorometric technique were studied. A decrease in the fluorescence ratio at 339 and 326 nm (I339/I326) was observed in emulsions treated with spores, which is similar to previously reported results using chemical demulsifiers.