Development of a laboratory setup for destruction of oil-water emulsions

Abstract

The work describes a laboratory setup developed by the authors for destruction of oil-water emulsions. The setup can be used in chemical analytical testing laboratories as new auxiliary equipment for preparing samples of crude oils, which are oil-water emulsions, for obtaining dehydrated oil. The setup includes two borosilicate glass units: heating unit and desiccating unit. The heating unit consists of a conical vessel equipped with a heating element for programmable heating and thermostating of the vessel. The desiccating unit consists of a vessel with a drain hole at the bottom, into which, if necessary, a water-absorbing reagent (calcium chloride) is placed for deeper dehydration of the separated oil phase. The units are connected to each other by a glass adapter, which is equipped with two PTFE or KhN-1 type taps, for collecting water and oil phases into different receiving bottles. Feasibility of using calcium chloride as a drying agent was confirmed by a series of experiments on a model oil sample, in which fractions that boiled away at temperatures below 300 °C were preliminary removed. The data obtained confirmed the absence of partial adsorption of resinous-asphaltene substances during the passage of the separated oil phase through the drying reagent layer. Metrological characteristics of determining separated water fraction were calculated to assess the effectiveness of the laboratory installation. The result of using the developed laboratory setup is the complete destruction of direct and reverse type water-oil emulsions of varying degrees of stability, which could not be demulsified by known laboratory methods. As a result, separated oil phases with a water content of below 1% were obtained, which allows carrying out laboratory studies of oils to determine their composition and properties both to characterize the oils themselves and to establish the reasons for stability of analyzed emulsions.