Investigating mobility of crude oil adsorbates on mineral surfaces by NMR

We have applied diffusion and relaxation Nuclear Magnetic Resonance experiments to investigate the translational and rotational mobility of adsorbents on quartz and calcite mineral surfaces. On both surfaces it was found that water is the dominant molecule. On the quartz surface the majority of water molecules have a relatively high degree of both rotational and translational mobility, while a minor fraction of water molecules, and all hydrocarbon molecules, have a significantly lower mobility. On the calcite surface the translational mobility is very low for all the adsorbed molecules, while there is a large diversity in rotational mobility, indicating that the hydrocarbon molecules are strongly attached to the surface, but that some part of each molecule still have a large degree of rotational mobility. Diffusion and relaxation experiments give a detailed description of both the molecular mobility of adsorbed species on these mineral surfaces, which leads to new insight with respect to aging processes on a molecular level.