Retrofittable Flexible Fabric Liners with Surface-Functionalized Electroless Nickel Coatings for Midstream Transportation of Bitumen.

Increasing global energy demands have heightened reliance on unconventional fossil fuels such as heavy oil and bitumen. However, the rheological properties of these liquids make them challenging to handle and transport. Midstream transportation methods for heavy oil and bitumen encompassing rail cars, trucks, tankers, and pipelines, require extensive dilution with lighter oils and thermal jacketing to facilitate fluid flow. Designing surfaces that readily glide heavy oil would allow for much more efficient midstream transportation by reducing reliance on diluents, decreasing product loss, substantially diminishing maintenance from surface fouling, and alleviating the need for expensive thermal infrastructure. Surfaces that form plastronic air pockets based on reentrant curvature and appropriate surface functionalization show promise for heavy oil drag reduction. Here, we present the design of a superhydrophobic and superoleophobic coating integrated directly onto cotton fabric substrates that can be used to retrofit current midstream infrastructure to glide bitumen. A multiscale hierarchically textured surface is achieved by embedding polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) nanobeads within an electroless nickel alloy coating whose surface energy is further reduced by surface functionalization with 1