A facile and economical configuration for continuous generation and separation of oil in water emulsions

Abstract

The development of a facile, compact, and inexpensive system for continuous liquid-liquid emulsification and separation, is a major engineering challenge in different industries such as petroleum, cosmetics, and food production. Herein, we report a simple and scalable design strategy for continuous generation and separation of the oil in water emulsions. The inexpensive, abundantly available sand was utilized for the fabrication of porous beds connected to process piping for continuous emulsion generation and separation. A mechanistic understanding of the governing parameters such as sand wettability, pore size, retention time, and energy dissipation are discussed in detail. Building on this understanding, we are able to generate stable oil in water emulsions with either nanoparticles or surfactants and achieve their complete demulsification by tuning the sand wettability, pore size, and retention time. We show the industrial applicability of the designed system by generation and separation of extremely viscous heavy crude oil in water emulsion, which would be suitable for pipeline transportation. Our results show the new way for the development of a modular and economical process unit at the industrial scale for liquid-liquid emulsification and separation.