The problem of water-in-oil emulsion destruction is related to many technological processes in the oil-and-gas industry, especially in extracting and processing of oil, preparation and transportation of oil, and liquidation/recycling of oil-sludge barns. High stability of water-in-oil emulsions is principally conditioned by the presence in oils of heavy high-molecular polar components that envelope water droplets and prevent coalescence of these droplets. Using conventional techniques to destroy the emulsions yields no positive results. Employing electromagnetic field energy is one of the ways to address this problem. The paper presents the results of an experimental study of the water-in-oil emulsion destruction in radio-frequency and microwave electromagnetic fields. A mathematical model is also proposed to describe the process of electromagnetic impact on water-in-oil emulsions.
The paper presents the results of an experimental study of heating and the structural resultant changes of source rocks under the influence of the electromagnetic field in the microwave and radio-frequency ranges. The samples from the Bazhenov Formation (West Siberia, Russia) and the Domanic Formation (Ural, Russia) have been tested. It is shown that samples from these formations demonstrate very different heating rates at the same electromagnetic field parameters and the their heating rate depends on the type of the electromagnetic field (radio-frequency or microwave) applied. The temperature of the Bazhenov Formation samples reaches 300 °C within one hundred seconds of the microwave treatment but it slowly rises to 200 °C after twelve minutes of the radio-frequency influence. The samples of the carbonate Domanic Formation heat up more slowly in the microwave field (within two hundred seconds) and to lower temperatures in the radio-frequency (150 °C) than the Bazhenov Formation samples. The study of the structure of the samples before and after experiments on the electromagnetic treatment shows fracture formation during the heating process. Numerical simulations of heating dynamics of source rock samples have been based on a simple mathematical model of the electromagnetic influence and main features of heating for different types of source rock have been revealed. The opportunities for application of electromagnetic heating for oil source rock recovery are discussed.
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