Use of Oleo-Phobic Ion Beam Irradiated Grafted Polymer to Enhance Transportation of Crude Oil

Flow of crude oil in pipelines leads to deposition of wax on the walls of the pipes in which the oil is transported. This eventually leads to reduction in the diameter of the available area for flow of oil. Also wax offers a cohesive force leading to reduction in speed of flow. Oleo-phobic surfaces may offer effective solutions to many engineering and industrial problems like coating in pipelines for crude transportation which may be responsible for reduction in wax deposition. Oleo-phobic surfaces have been explored due to their self-cleaning character. The multi-functional coating on a grafted polymer surface is the current field of research that has been applied in this paper. The surface morphology of PTFE polymeric surface has been modified by employing two fold methodology for studying the oleophobicity of the PTFE surface with potential application in various engineering processes. First: Increasing the surface roughness by chemical grafting process, under robust conditions and Second: The roughness of the grafted polymeric surface has been further enhanced by irradiating the polymeric surface by low energy Ar+ ion beam with interaction time of 10s and 100s. The grafting of MMA on PTFE surface has been done at different temperatures, reaction times, monomer concentrations and initiator concentrations, to obtain an optimum value of all these parameters giving maximum grafting yield. To further increase the roughness, the grafted co-polymers were irradiated using 3KeV Ar+ ions and defocused ion beam for beam time with for interaction time 10s and 100s respectively and again the effect of this treatment on the surface reference and morphology has been studied through FE-SEM, EDS, CAG and XRD analysis.