Emulsion Stability of Heavy Oil with Surfactants and Nanoparticles

Abstract

The recovered crude oil is often in form of an emulsion and the recovery is cut off when water to oil ratio exceeds a certain amount. The emulsions vary from water-in-oil to oil-in-water and the step that follows is to coalesce droplets to get two continuous liquids. Difficulties arise when the oil contains emulsifiers. There are naturally occurring surfactants, or the oil recovered is by enhanced oil recovery techniques which have additives that stabilize the droplets. We have considered below a heavy oil (viscosity 650-750 mPa.s) containing one of the three surfactants: a nonionic surfactant or a cationic surfactant or an anionic surfactant. In addition, the mix can have alumina or silica nanoparticles or none. Most of the results have straightforward interpretations. There is no apparent effect due to nanoparticles. Cationic surfactants appear to give rise to a secondary haze. If the system contains nonionic surfactant then it can be destabilized by raising the temperature, except for one notable case. There are also cases of precipitation of nanoparticles. We observe that overall, phase separation happens best in presence of anionic surfactant, although complete phase separation rarely happens. This is attributed here to the very high viscosity of oil, which feature is independent of the additives.

Department(s)

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering

Second Department

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering

Publication Status

Open Access

Comments

U.S. Department of Energy, Grant SPE-190440-MS

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

2688-8246

Document Type

Article - Journal

Document Version

Citation

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2024 The Authors, All rights reserved.

Publication Date

01 Jan 2020

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