Transportation of heavy oils using polymer-stabilized oil-in-water emulsions

Abstract

The increase in demand for crude oil and the depletion of light crude oil reserves have led to increase in the production of heavy crude oils. This has resulted in an interest in decreasing the pumping costs by techniques such as heating, dilution and/or mixing with water. Among the aforementioned methods, emulsification of heavy crude oil with water is the cheapest, and hence, optimizing its application has found increasing attention. This study uses one of the heavy crude oils in Oman to study the viscosity reduction achieved by emulsification with water at different oil fractions, temperatures, shear rates and salt content. Two chemicals were used to stabilize the emulsions, namely a nonionic surfactant and an anionic, high molecular weight polymer. It was found that viscosity reduction higher than 90% can be obtained through the creation of oil-in-water emulsions with oil content of less than 70%. Generally, it was found that there is no effect on the viscosity reduction obtainable from oil-in-water emulsions produced using the nonionic surfactant at shear rate up to 1620 s-1 , temperature up to 80°C and salt content up to 2.0 wt%. On the other hand, the viscosity reduction using water-in-oil emulsions at a temperature of 30°C increases with surfactant concentration and shear rate. Also, the increase in salt content adversely affected the viscosity reduction obtained using water-in-oil emulsions. Moreover, it was possible to create oil-in-water emulsions with 60% oil content and viscosity reduction of around 100% in tap water using 100 and 1000 ppm polymer at all temperatures investigated. However, the use of 2.0 wt% salt resulted in

Viscosity Reduction of Indian Heavy Crude Oil by Emulsification to O/W Emulsion Using Polysorbate‐81

“…Higher viscosity values than 0.4 Pa·s result in higher pressure drops in pipeline. To overcome huge pressure drop, pumping power requirement will also increase (Al‐Hashmi et al, 2017; Gudala et al, 2018, 2019b; Hart, 2014; Muñoz et al, 2016). Emulsion droplet size becomes much finer with an increase in surfactant concentration as more surfactant molecules will migrate to oil–water interface increasing elasticity of interfacial film, thereby increasing its ESI and reducing chances of coalescence of droplets.…”

“…HCO can be transported through pipelines by reducing viscosity and minimizing wall friction (Hoshyargar and Ashrafizadeh, 2013). Transportation of HCO as O/W emulsion is believed to be the most favorable technique (Al‐Hashmi et al, 2017; Umar et al, 2018). Pure hydrocarbons cannot form stable emulsion with water, the presence of surfactant/additives is essential.…”

“…The authors in Kumar et al, 2015 and Gudala et al, 2017 have proved that small amount of a naturally extracted surfactant Mahua can effectively reduce heavy crude oil viscosity. Various researchers achieved viscosity reduction from 88.23% to 99.9% using nonionic surfactants for various HCO of API gravity ranging from 12.3 to 19.5 (Al‐Hashmi et al, 2017; Ferreira et al, 2007; Kumar and Mahto, 2017; Kundu and Mishra, 2013; Maran et al, 2013).…”

Agentes emulsificantes aplicados à estabilização de emulsões o/a com intuito de melhorar o transporte de óleos pesados através das tubulações: Um estudo bibliométrico

“…Devido às características intrínsecas dos petróleos pesados e extrapesados (alta densidade, alta viscosidade e composição química complexa) (Sun et al, 2017), a produção destes óleos a partir da energia natural do reservatório ou do uso de métodos de recuperação secundária (injeção de água e/ou gás) é inviabilizada (Al-Hashmi et al, 2016). Óleos pesados tendem a apresentar valores de viscosidade entre 10 3 mPa.s a 10 5 mPa.s, em condições ambiente.…”

Experimental and Correlation Development of Heavy Oil Viscosity Using Bio-Additives

“…They also reported that quadripolymers have high thermal stability up to 320 °C. Al-Hashmi et al 22 explored the consequence of temperature, oil cut, surfactant, polymer, and salt concentrations, on the rheological behavior of HO (Oman) water emulsions. HO and 70% crude oil emulsion after addition of 3 wt % Triton X-100 displays shear thinning behavior at each temperature.…”