Abstract
A matrix of 30 crude oils have been analyzed to investigate if there is any correlation between the physiochemical properties of the crude oils and the quality of the produced water. As an approach to study produced water quality, oil. and brine water (3.5 wt%) have been mixed together, and transmission profiles from the separation process have been investigated by means of Turbiscan LAb. The Turbiscan LAb enables the study of stability of colloidal dispersions without any dilution or modification of the sample. The oil-in-water emulsions (30:70) were made by mixing oil and water at low speed to be sure that they separate within a short period of time. Drop size distributions were investigated for all crude oil emulsions by using a Coulter Counter (COULTER Multisizer II). The correlations between transmission profiles and crude oil characteristics were made by using principal component analysis (PCA), a method that helps visualize the most important information contained in a data set and find combinations of variables that describe major trends. A Vortoil K-liner hydrocyclone connected to a mixing rig has been used to separate oil and water in larger scale experiments. The objective with these experiments was to compare the results with separation experiments done at bench scale. Six crude oils have been investigated at the separation rig, and both droplet size distribution and dispersed oil concentration have been performed. The main conclusions from this work are that Turbiscan LAb is a suitable technique to study the separation of oil-in-water with good reproducibility. The results from the multivariate data analysis show that the crude oils group according to if they are light or heavy and according to if they get high or low transmission. From the larger scale experiments it has been shown that the droplet sizes, oil/water density differential, and viscosity have a significant impact on separation efficiency.
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