Eventos Anais de eventos
ENCIT 2022
19th Brazilian Congress of Thermal Sciences and Engineering
Experimental study on droplets breakage of oil-water emulsions (O/W) across a variable pressure drop device
Submission Author:
Alex Roger Almeida Colmanetti , SP , Brazil
Co-Authors:
Alex Roger Almeida Colmanetti, Gabriel Furlan, Gherhardt Ribatski, Luiz Fernando Barca, Erika Aparecida Carvalho, Thais Lamoglia de Carvalho, Aloisio Orlando
Presenter: Gabriel Furlan
doi://10.26678/ABCM.ENCIT2022.CIT22-0536
Abstract
Emulsions occur in several industrial applications covering different engineering fields, such as the pharmaceutical industry, the food industry, the cosmetics industry, and also the petrochemical industry. Especially in the oil-gas industry, emulsions are observed in most of the processes, including crude oil, transport, and refining. The injection of water in mature wells, which is a technique recurrently employed to increase crude oil productivity, favors the formation of emulsions during the oil production stage. In offshore environments, the effluents from the production process are usually treated, however, this treatment operation is challenging in such conditions due to limited space and the inherent difficulty in separating stable oil-water emulsions (O/W). Currently, there are several investigations focusing on emulsion separation, however, this type of study necessarily requires the production and characterization of emulsions with a certain distribution and droplet size (DTG). The present study presents an experimental evaluation of the emulsion production process in a mixing device (“mixing tee”) and oil droplets breaking in a variable pressure drop device (globe valve). Both devices are part of an experimental facility developed for this study. The emulsion was produced by injecting a crude oil with API Gravity of 21.31, which is characterized by a dynamic viscosity of 229.83 mPa.s, a density of 0.9216 g/cm³, surface tension of 30.9 mN/m, and interfacial tension of 22.0 mN/m (proprieties at 20°C). Emulsion characterization was performed through measurements of oil and grease content (TOG) and also of droplet size and its distribution (DTG). The stability of emulsions was also evaluated through measurements of the Oil and Grease Content (TOG) over time, which were obtained for the respective time intervals: i) 0 min (online), ii) 15 min (after the experiments in the glass separating funnel) and iii) 30 min (after the experiments in the glass separating funnel). The results show that with increasing pressure drop (ΔP) in the pressure drop device, the DTG decreases.
Keywords
Oil-water emulsions, droplet breakage, Oil and grease content (TOG), Droplet Size and Distribution (DTG), globe valve (VG)
