Petroleum

properties

Dr. Hanoon H. Mashkoor &

Asst. Lect. Maryam J. Jaafar
• Emulsification
To emulsify is to force two immiscible liquids to combine
in a suspension-substances like oil and water, which cannot
dissolve in each other to form a uniform, homogenous
solution. Although oil and water can’t mix, we can break oil
down into teeny-tiny droplets that can remain suspended in
the water. An emulsion happens when small droplets of one
solution (the dispersed solution, which is often oil based)
are dispersed throughout another (the continuous solution,
which is often water based).
• The stability of the emulsion depends on the nature of the
mixture, its chemical composition, viscosity, and
temperature.
• The most important source of water in crude oil is the
water in the reservoir along with crude oil and water used
in the drilling of wells and their repair for the fracturing
operations in the well in which the water is used in
addition to the cracks that occur in Inside the cement
well layer lead the water permeability through it and
mixed with oil .
• Crude oil generally contains 5-10% water by volume, and
the percentage may rise to 100% at the end of the
production well life, especially when using the water
injection method to oil production.
• And this, in turn, creates a problem in the units of water
and salts removing, as they are designed to accommodate
filtering capacity or a specific water percentage, which
results in replacement or development of this unit in order
to be able to separate water with a larger volumetric
flowrate.
• Types Of Emulsions
1. Water In Oil Emulsion
They are very small drops of water dispersed in the crude
oil, and these drops are usually surrounded by a thin
membrane made of placer materials that prevent the
merging of these drops and for this reason chemicals are
used to break the membrane.
2. Oil In Water Emulsion
They are very small drops of crude oil that spread in
the water and such emulsion increases its percentage
with the aging of the well as the ratio of oil to water
in the reservoir decreases, especially when resorting
to water injection production in the well.
3. Mixed Emulsion
It is a mixture of water emulsion in crude oil and
emulsion of oil in water. The separation process is
more complicated than other types because it requires
more units in addition to the multiplicity of
demulsifies used.
• Demulsifies
Damages and problems that occur due to water and salts in
crude oil have become necessary to get rid of them. This
requires removing all the challenges that could prevent the
sedimentation or separation of water from the crude oil, and
among these things is the colloid membrane called the film
that surrounds the emulsified water droplets, which prevents
the droplets from merging with each other, so this
membrane must be removed or broken and is used
demulsifies for this purpose, which are mineral chemicals
of an ionic or neutral nature that are added to the crude oil
in a certain percent that break the membrane and thus leads
to the easy collection of drops
• And it is of three types
1. Anionic demulsifies.
2. Cationic demulsifies.
3. Nonionic demulsifies.
• This difference is in the types of demulsifies is due to the
difference in the chemical composition of the membrane
surrounding water droplets, and for this, laboratory tests
must be performed to determine the ionic nature of the
membrane in order to add natural anti-ionic substances to
it.
• These materials are added at very low concentrations,
mostly at the head of the well in the oil fields or in an
area close to the main tower in the refinery to ensure
homogeneous mixing of the material and prolong the
mixing time to increase the separation efficiency.
1. Electrical Coalescence
This method has a great effect on small drops compared to
other methods, and the work of this method is by applying a
high-voltage electric field to crude oil, sometimes reaching
30,000 volts and at a variable frequency by electrodes
immersed in crude oil.
Where the high voltage works to electrically induce the
droplets to gain an electrical charge, which makes the
positive and negative polarized droplets merge with each
other, forming larger drops that are easily sedimentation due
to their large weight and the change in electrical frequency
makes the very small drops move a greater distance than the
large droplets, this makes it easier to combine with large
drops.
• And because of the electrical induction, the
polarized drops with the increased charge have to
take an elliptical shape (elongate), which
increases the surface area and thus rupture the
membrane (film) that prevents collecting, and
thus the collection process will be easier and
faster, and this method is effective with high
temperatures.
• And the separation process in this case takes
about twenty minutes only, during which the
percentage of salts are reduced to only (10%) of
their original content.
• The previous methods do not give a 100% complete
separation process, as there is still a small percentage of
water that is difficult to separate by the industrial
production methods due to the flow disturbance and the
relatively small size of the droplets, which are somewhat
far apart, making it far from the influence of the previous
separation methods. The amount of remainder water has
a high salt concentration, and therefore work is done to
reduce the salt concentration by washing with water with
a low salt concentration.
• Washing By Water
The purpose of this process is to reduce the salt
concentration in the crude oil to the required level, as pure
water extracts the largest possible amount of salts in the
emulsified water remaining in the crude oil in this process,
severe mixing or drop in pressure should be avoided which
causes severe flow disturbance that leads to emulsification
of the wash water.
• And for this it is preferable to use a Globe Valve when adding
water to crude oil in a unit for removing water and salts from
oil. Water is added in large quantities to crude oil in the event
that there are solid salt crystals stuck in the oil for the purpose
of dissolving and disposing of them, pure water must be added
after the emulsification breakers addition area in order to
combine the emulsified water droplets treated with the
emulsification breakers with pure water added to the crude oil.
In refineries, water and salts are removed from crude oil using
the previous methods combined in one unit called the unit for
removing water and salts, note Figure, and crude oil can be
treated by more than one unit in two or three stages depending
on the ratio of water and salts in the crude oil. In the end, it is
possible to obtain crude oil, the salt content in it should not
exceed one pound per thousand barrels (1lbs /1000br)