Abstract
The main aim of the present study is to develop a detail mathematical model to investigate the performance of an industrial electrostatic desalting process. The dehydration process consists of a mixing valve and an electrostatic coalescer drum. The equipments are modeled based on the population balance equation considering a detail circuit model in the coalescer drum. The electrode plates and crude oil emulsion are considered as a complex of parallel capacitors and dielectric material, respectively. To prove the accuracy of the model and assumptions, the outlet water cut from the coalescer drum is compared with the plant data. Then the effect of temperature, fresh water rate and current frequency on the strength of applied electric field on the emulsion, voltage decay, size distribution of water droplets and outlet water cut in the treated crude oil is investigated based on the developed model. The simulation results show that increasing current frequency from 50 to 300 Hz reduces water cut in the treated crude oil from 0.12% to 0.09%, respectively.
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