Lin He

Tianjin University | tju · School of Chemical Engineering and Technology

The polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are common constituents and pose significant influences on many separation and conversion processes. Herein, an efficient approach has been developed to fast and precisely reconstruct the molecular models for PAHs. The method involves stochastic reconstruction for a molecular library and artificial neural...

Industrial transformation has brought about huge changes to the human society in many different aspects [...]

The abundant unconventional oil ores (about 70% of total world oil) are playing an increasingly important role in global energy supply. To obtain asphalt in unconventional oil ores, different methods, including hot water-based extraction, pyrolysis and solvent extraction, were used to recover asphalt from oil ores (i.e., Canadian, Indonesian, and I...

Non-covalent interactions have been proved to be dominated in the process of demulsification. Herein, a hierarchical-three-level method of combined density functional theory (DFT) simulation has been proposed to understand the non-covalent interactions between a home-made demulsifier (MJTJU-2, oxygen-enriched non-ionic demulsifiers) and asphaltenes...

Oil-water emulsions separation is frequently required considering the production and environmental issues. Herein, a nano-modification strategy has been proposed for carboxylated poly(propylene oxide)-poly(ethylene oxide) block polyether (mANP) using epoxy-functionalized magnetic nanoparticles (Fe3O4@SiO2-GPTMS), achieving the construction of a hig...

Solvent loss in the residual solids has been considered as a major challenge during the solvent extraction processes of unconventional oil ores (oil sands, asphalt rocks, etc.) or similar liquid-solid extraction. Meanwhile, the residual solvent in the solvent-extracted solids also cause serious environmental problems. The gas (CO2) bubbling process...

Oil–water emulsions are widely generated in industries, which may facilitate some processes (e.g., transportation of heavy oil, storage of milk, synthesis of chemicals or materials, etc.) or lead to serious upgrading or environmental issues (e.g., pipeline plugging, corrosions to equipment, water pollution, soil pollution, etc.). Herein, the source...

During the aqueous-nonaqueous hybrid bitumen extraction (HBE) or the solvent extraction processes of unconventional oil ores, especially for the ores with high asphaltene content, solvent loss in tailings has been a major factor affecting environmental issues and operating costs. Herein, we proposed the experimental tests with molecular dynamic sim...

Porous carbons (PCs) have been prepared by using the heavy fraction of phenolic distillation residue as raw materials, and it used a carbonize-activated one-step method combining with KOH activation and different templates (CaCO3, Al2O3, MgO). The PCs were characterized by X-ray diffraction, Raman spectrum, scanning electron microscope and nitrogen...

The efficiencies of thermal desorption and oxidation process in engineering soil remediation are to some extent limited due to the huge loss of heat to the soil or underground water or mass transfer resistance in the soil. To enhance the oxidation and improve the energy utilization. Herein, the thermal desorption process and the oxidation process (...

Chemical demulsification is the most commonly used demulsification method for the separation of oil–water emulsions (W/O) in petroleum industry. Previous experiments demonstrate that the interfacially active asphaltenes (IAA) play the key role in stabilizing the heavy oil–water emulsions. Herein, the molecular dynamic simulation has been applied to...

The entrainment of residual switchable hydrophilicity solvents (e.g., N, N, N′, N′-tetraethyl-1,3-propanediamine (TEPDA)) in the oil phase after solvent extraction was considered as one of the main challenges hindering the application of switchable solvents. Herein, the residual behavior of TEPDA in bitumen has been systematically investigated with...

Oil-water emulsions separation is a significant and intractable problem in many industrial processes, especially in petroleum industry. To deal with the demulsification of oil-water emulsions, a novel kind of amphiphilic magnetic demulsifier (M-ANP) has been designed and successfully synthesized by grafting aliphatic alcohol nonionic propylene oxid...

A new resourcezation way has been proposed to address the treatment challenges of the light phenolic distillation residue (LPDR) from the coal-based phenolic distillation residue. Herein, the LPDR, which was collected at 20 kPa and 220 °C from the phenolic distillation residue, has been further used to synthesize the phenolic resin (named as RPF) f...

To degrade the chlorobenzenes from contaminated soil, herein, a novel peroxomonosulfate-ferrate-FeS (PFI) hybrid oxidation system has been proposed. Take the o-dichlorobenzene as a typical contaminant, results of bottle tests show that the PFI oxidation system performs well in removing the pollutant, achieving up to 93% of removal efficiency in les...

The intensified heat integrated technology can be applied to the distillation column to improve the utilization of energy resources in the chemical separation processes. For further improving the energy efficiency of the hydrocarbon mixture distillation separation process, a novel two-parts heat integrated dividing wall column (DWC) with middle vap...

Recovery of heavy oil from carbonate oil ores is always a challenge by water-flooding process which is highly dependent on the water chemistry. Herein, experimental tests (by atomic force microscopy (AFM), quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation (QCM-D)) and molecular dynamic (MD) simulation have been conducted to understand the exact role of...

The complex relationship between the oil and minerals (e.g., silica, calcite, illite) makes it much tougher for the heavy oil recovery. We evidenced that the Indonesian asphalt rocks are composed of porous foraminifera fossils with asphalt covering the whole porous particles (80–400 μm). It is found that the asphalt not only covered the rock surfac...

Solvent loss in the residual solids has been considered as a major challenge during the solvent extraction processes of unconventional oil ores (oil sands, asphalt rocks, etc.). Herein, we proposed a gas bubbling method to remove and recover the residual solvents from the extracted gangue for the purpose of solvent reuse and environment remediation...

The key step for the adsorption‐desorption engineering process is the reversible in‐situ desorption of the adsorbent without VOCs (volatile organic compounds) accumulation. Our previous results showed that the mesoporous silica gel performs well in adsorbing and desorbing the VOCs due to their capillary condensation in the mesopores. However, the m...

Heat integrated technologies can be used to revamp the methyl acetate (MeAc) hydrolysis process which help to recover the waste heat energy or replace the steam by the electric energy. A novel middle vapor recompression reactive distillation column (MVRCRD) was proposed to improve the performance of original reactive distillation column (RD). Also,...

The adsorption and desorption behaviors of two polar-nonpolar typical VOCs (n-butyl acetate and p-xylene) on activated carbon have been investigated by a temperature swing -vacuum pressure swing adsorption (TS-VSA) hybrid process. This hybrid process allows the maximal concentration enrichment (desorbed concentration to feed concentration ratio) of...

An organic-inorganic hydrophobic mesoporous silica has been successfully prepared by a co-condensation method with tetraethoxysilane (TEOS) and vinyltriethoxysilane (VTES) as mixed precursors under acidic condition. The synthesized mesoporous silica has been characterized by small-angle X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM...

Separation of asphalt from carbonate unconventional ores is a challenge due to the strong interactions between carbonate mineral surfaces and asphalt. Our previous results show that the reactive extraction process performs well in recovering both extra-heavy oil and minerals from carbonate oil ores (RSC Adv. 2019, 9: 14372–14381). Herein, further t...

The interfacially active asphaltenes (IAA, 1.75wt% of the total asphaltenes) from the Indonesian asphalt rocks have been proved to be the major component in stabilizing the water-in-oil (W/O) emulsion (stable even over 1 year) than other fractions in asphalt (i.e., asphaltenes, maltenes (asphalt without asphaltenes), remaining asphaltenes (RA, asph...

The ionic liquids (ILs) are reported to perform well in enhancing the oil-solid separation (in pure state or in solution) and oil-water separation (in solution) processes through interfacial alteration. Herein, the interfacial behaviors of IL ([C8mim][Br], [C10mim][Br], [C12mim][Br]) cations and asphaltenes (from Indonesian asphalt) at the oil-wate...

A novel aliphatic alcohol nonionic polyether (MJTJU-2) has been successfully synthesized by esterification and polymerization. It is found that this new polyether is efficient in fast demulsifying the water-in-oil emulsions, including water-in-diesel emulsion, water-in-crude oil emulsion, water-in-asphalt oil emulsion and water-in-asphaltenes solut...

The solvent extraction technology is a promising method for recovery of unconventional oil resources because of its high efficiency, low energy consumption, and high compatibility. Solvent selection and solvent loss are the main limitations in terms of industrialization of the technology. To evaluate the solvent, efficient detection of the residual...

In this work, the asphaltenes from natural Indonesia asphalt rocks were taken as raw materials for the preparation of micro-mesoporous enriched carbon material through pyrolysis (< 500 ℃) and KOH activation (< 900 ℃) processes. It is found that, during the pyrolysis process, the asphaltenes could be converted to non-condensable gas (36.02%), pyroly...

The vacuum swing adsorption (VSA) with silica gel (SG) is proved to be a promising method for the recovery of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). The adsorption mechanisms of o-xylene on silica gels with different pore size have been revealed through the mathematic modeling of adsorption isotherms. The analysis of adsorption kinetics indicates that...

The heat released during the industrial gas adsorption (e.g., volatile organic compounds (VOCs)) on adsorbents (e.g., activated carbon) would lead to the risks of fire and explosion in the adsorption column. Herein, a novel highly-porous Vinylbenzyl chloride-Divinylbenzene (VBC-DVB) polymeric adsorbent was synthesized with embedded microcapsules (H...

Quite different from the Canadian oil sands, the Indonesian asphalt rocks proved to be carbonate unconventional oil ores. The strong interactions between asphalt and minerals make water-based extraction work poorly in separating this kind of ore. Herein, a reactive extraction process has been proposed to separate asphalt and mineral solids from the...

Compared with the abatement methods (RTO, RCO, etc.), the adsorption-desorption combined method has been considered as a sustainable way to treat and recover the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from off-gases in painting or coating industry. It also helps to reduce the production of waste adsorbents compared with the traditional single adsorption...

The solubility of calcium formate (form α) in four different binary solvent mixtures (methanol + water, ethanol + water, n-propanol + water, and acetone + water) from 283.15 to 323.15 K was measured by a static equilibrium method under atmospheric pressure. Results indicated that the solubility increased with the increasing temperature and water co...

In this study, a series of choline-based amino acid ionic liquids have been synthesized in an economic method and are used to assist solvents with extracting asphalt from carbonate rocks. All of the ionic liquids perform well in extracting asphalt, especially choline histidine, by which the single-step recovery of asphalt is up to 91%. Furthermore,...

The adsorption and desorption of asphaltene on silica surface is highly dependent on the heteroatoms present in its structure. Herein, some model asphaltene molecules with different heteroatoms (i.e., N, O, S) at different positions (in the aromatic cores, in the middle and termination of alkane side chains) are selected as the adsorbates to invest...

Separation is widely involved in many fields, such as materials synthesis, gas purification or removal, water treatment, petroleum exploitation, soil remediation, food and medicine production, etc. Compared with the physical separation, the chemical separation has unique advantages when the functionalized process aids are added in systems. The CO2-...

The adsorption and desorption of polar volatile organic compounds (VOCs) on silica gel are carried out by vacuum swing adsorption with acetone and ethyl acetate as examples.The nitrogen absorption and desorption isotherm test shows that 1 # silica gel has the largest specific surface area (766 m ² •g ⁻¹ ) among the three kinds of silica gel (1 # ,2...

Adsorption and desorption of acetone and ethyl acetate (two typical oxygenated VOCs) on silica gel have been systematically studied by vacuum swing adsorption (VSA) combined with temperature swing adsorption (TSA) process. It is found that the adsorption of both the oxygenated VOC compounds on silica gel could be well described by the Langmuir-Freu...

With low melting point, extremely low vapor pressure and non-flammability, ionic liquids have been attracting much attention from academic and industrial fields. Great efforts have been made to facilitate their applications in catalytic processes, extraction, desulfurization, gas separation, hydrogenation, electronic manufacturing, etc. To reduce t...

Ionic liquids (ILs) have been reported to be good process aids for enhanced bitumen recovery from oil sands. However, after the extraction, some ionic liquids are left in the residual solids or solutions. Herein, a washing–ion exchange combined method has been designed for the removal of two imidazolium-based ILs, ([Bmim][BF4] and [Emim][BF4]), fro...

Ionic liquids have been considered for application in petroleum separation (especially in unconventional oil production) as interfacial functional materials at pure state or aqueous solution state. Herein, the interactions between bitumen and silica in ionic liquids (i.e., [Emim][BF4]) aqueous solution and pure ionic liquids have been investigated...

A switchable solvent with a diamine structure called N, N, N′, N′-tetraethyl-1, 3-propanediamine (TEPDA) has been synthesized through an alkylation reaction. This solvent can switch between its hydrophilic and hydrophobic states with the addition or removal of CO2, respectively. It is found that TEPDA can be applied as an organic solvent and can be...

A new kind of hydrophilic magnetic nanoparticle has been synthesized and investigated for the performance in floatation experiments.

A new, simple one-step approach has been developed to synthesize lignin and lignin amine coated Fe₃O₄ nanoparticles. These nanoparticles (lignin magnetic nanoparticles (LMNPs) and lignin amine magnetic nanoparticles (LAMNPs)) are found to possess not only magnetic response but also pH-dependent adsorption behavior. Results show that the combination...

Oil pollution does great harm to ecological environment and human health. The oil contamination in the soil mainly comes from the leakage in the process of exploitation, refining, transportation and the storage of oil. Now, global situation of soil contamination caused by oil is extremely serious. The increasing public and scientific concern with t...

In this study, the organic Rankine cycle (ORC) is applied to be integrated into the fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) absorption-stabilization system to extract and convert the low-grade process heat to electricity. This newly integrated system is simulated by the Aspen Plus software. For the simulation, eleven different dry and isentropic working flu...

An energy-saving set-up of pressure swing adsorption has been designed and applied to remove the high concentrations of toluene vapor (∼12,000 ppm) by silica gel at ambient temperature. It is evident that the adsorption of toluene vapor on silica gel matches the Langmuir–Freundlich model during the whole vapor concentration (up to 3.5 kPa), which i...

Separation of heavy hydrocarbons from mineral surfaces is the key step for unconventional oil production and remediation of oil contaminated soils. The presence of asphaltene and the coexistence of mineral rocks are considered as the most challenge during the above separation processes. Herein, the liberation of asphaltenes (and/or heavy oil) on mu...

The removal and recovery of o-xylene (a typical volatile organic compounds, VOCs) by silica gel has been systematically investigated by vacuum swing adsorption (VSA) process. Laboratory scale measurements show that the adsorption of o-xylene on silica gels could be significantly enhanced by increasing the height to diameter ratio (H/D) of adsorptio...

Quite different from the Canadian oil sands in oil content/composition, mineral composition, and particle size distribution, the carbonate Indonesia asphalt rocks (oil-wetted) are proven to be poorly extracted by the commercial hot water-based extraction (7.8% bitumen recovery at 50 ℃ and pH 9.0). While, great enhancement was obtained using multi-s...

Selection of solvents and process AIDS (i.e., ionic liquids (ILs)) is considered to be one of the key steps during solvent extraction for heavy hydrocarbon recovery from unconventional oil ores. In this study, the COSMOtherm software was applied to screen highly efficient solvents and ionic liquid systems based on oil fraction solubility and surfac...

Continuous use of caustics and increased level of water recycling inevitably increase the salinity of process water, which is a growing challenge in the current warm water-based bitumen extraction process. The current study aims at understanding how salinity of process water affects bitumen recovery from mineable oil sands ores. Laboratory flotatio...

A binary solvent of ethyl acetate and n-heptane was made and applied together with ionic liquids (ILs, 1-ethyl-3-methyl imidazolium tetrafluoroborate ([Emim]BF4)) to extract bitumen from oil sands at ambient conditions. Results of bottle tests show that the bitumen recovery is highly dependent on the volume ratio of ethyl acetate to n-heptane. The...

The triethylene glycol (TEG) was used to treat the off-gas stream containing 16 volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) with high concentration (up to 15000 ppm) by experimenal solvent absorption and ASPEN Plus computational simulation, respectively. This solvent adsorption technology (SAT) does not only purify the off-gas, but also recover the VOCs. The...

Ethyl cellulose (EC) and EO/PO polymers are known as efficient demulsifiers for breaking oil-water emulsions, which are applied in this study as process aids to enhancing unconventional oil liberation from host rock surfaces. Their applicability in such a role was assessed by studying dynamic contact angle and liberation of bitumen from model solid...

A kind of novel process aids, switchable-hydrophilicity tertiary amines (SHTAs, such as triethylamine, N, N-dimethylcyclohexylamine, N, N-dimethylbenzylamine) in their hydrophilic forms, have been synthesized and applied to enhancing heavy hydrocarbons recovery from oil sands ores in the solvent extraction. It is observed that the addition of SHTA...

A major drawback associated with current hot or warm water-based bitumen extraction processes is the high consumption of energy. To address this issue, an aqueous–nonaqueous hybrid bitumen extraction process (HBEP), in which a portion of the diluent (solvent) was added upfront to soak mined oil sands prior to its water-based extraction, was propose...

With the ever increasing demand for energy to meet the needs of growth in population and improvement in the living standards in particular in developing countries, the abundant unconventional oil reserves (about 70% of total world oil), such as heavy oil, oil/tar sands and shale oil, are playing an increasingly important role in securing global ene...

An essential requirement for efficient heavy oil production is liberation of heavy oil from host rocks, which is determined by the wettability of the rocks and interfacial tension and viscosity of heavy oil. A recent progress on the design of an on-line visualization flow cell allowed capture of dynamic heavy oil liberation process from sands in re...

Bitumen liberation is known to be an essential step for bitumen recovery from sand grains using the current warm/hot-water-based extraction process. This study aims at understanding the role of naphtha or toluene addition in enhancing bitumen liberation. Results from an in situ bitumen liberation visualization measurement indicate that soaking two...

A novel micropipet technique was developed to quantify the dewetting dynamics of individual microsphere particles by emulsified viscous crude oil drops in aqueous media. This technique allowed dynamic microscale receding contact angles of water to be measured in situ for solid–oil–water systems. System parameters, including modification of glass mi...

The bitumen liberation and recovery of oil sands have been well known affected, to some extent, by the bitumen physical properties, especially the surface properties, such as the interfacial tensions. Previous research showed that the interfacial tension of bitumen-water system was dependent on the composition of the bitumen (Mehrotra et al., 1985)...

The composition and distribution of saturates, aromatics, resins, and asphaltenes (SARA) fractions in the bituminous layer on the surface of Athabasca oil sands were identified using elemental analysis (EA), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), field emission scanning electron microscopy (SEM) with an energy-dispersive spectrometer (EDS), and Fo...

The molecular scale sorption, diffusion and distribution of asphaltene, resin, aromatic and saturate fractions of heavy crude oil on quartz surface were studied using molecular dynamic simulation. Sorption of saturates on quartz decreased by 31% when temperature increased from 298 to 398K while opposite trend was observed for resins, but insignific...

Nonaqueous solvent extraction is a promising technology for bitumen recovery from oil sands. In this study, influences of temperature, contact time, stirring rate, and solvent-to-oil sands ratio (V/M) on bitumen recovery, using a mixture solvent of n-heptane and toluene (V/V, 3:1), were investigated by L9 (34) orthogonal design. Under the orthogona...

An ionic liquid (IL) with low viscosity, 1-ethyl-3-methyl imidazolium tetrafluoroborate ([Emim][BF4]), was used to enhance bitumen recovery from oil sands by solvent extraction using a composite solvent of n-heptane and acetone. Results demonstrated that [Emim][BF4] increased the bitumen recovery by up to 95% at room temperature. Much less clay fin...

Solvent extraction was applied in the separation of oil sands and considered as a promising technology. Results in this study indicated that the factors such as the volume of solvent to mass of oil sand (v/m), solvent aromatic content (the amount of aromatic hydrocarbons in the solvent), and the polarity of the solvent significantly influenced the...

Perfluorocarbons (PFCs) gases have high global warming potential (GWP) and a long lifetime in the atmosphere. It is difficult to decompose these gases due to their tetrahedral structure arising from strong C-F bonds. This paper discussed C2F6 (one of PFCs gases) thermal decomposition characteristic under 950-1100 °C in a laboratory scale reactor. T...