Dehydration of Heavy Crudes by Electrical Means

Abstract

This paper was prepared for the 41st Annual Fall Meeting of the Society of Petroleum Engineers of AIME, to be held in Dallas, Texas, Oct. 2–5, 1966. Permission to copy is restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words. Illustrations may not be copied. The abstract should contain conspicuous acknowledgment of where and by whom the paper is presented. Publication elsewhere after publication in the JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY or the SOCIETY OF PETROLEUM ENGINEERS JOURNAL is usually granted upon request to the Editor of the appropriate journal provided agreement to give proper credit is made. Discussion of this paper is invited. Three copies of any such discussion should be sent to the Society of Petroleum Engineers office. Such discussions may be presented at the above meeting and, with the paper, may be considered for publication in one of the two SPE magazines. Abstract Operating data and results from a number of commercial installations employing chemically-aided electrical dehydration to purify low gravity (less than 18 degrees API) crude oils (including those produced by thermal recovery methods) are reported. The influence of certain physical properties of the crude oils - including API gravity, viscosity, and particle size distribution of the water droplets in the emulsion - on the results achieved by commercial units has been investigated and is described in detail. Similarly, the influence of certain operating conditions - including temperature, pressure, and electrical potential - is reported. A description of the design procedure by which the electrical requirements, capacity, and product quality expected of field installations are calculated from laboratory pilot tests is included, as is a discussion of the means by which appropriate chemical aids are selected. A brief discussion of the role of chemical aids in electrical dehydration is also provided. The data and results presented indicate that field installations can be satisfactorily designed on the basis of the physical properties of the crude oils and pilot plant tests when these elements are combined with appropriate empirical data. Both field data from operating units and laboratory tests also demonstrate that, with suitable equipment and operating conditions, the electrical dehydration characteristics of thermally produced oils do not differ significantly from those of other heavy oils. Introduction Background. Electrical dehydration was one of the earliest commercial means of dehydrating the heavy viscous crudes produced in California.