Abstract
Water-in-oil emulsion is serious problems in the industry since it affects oil production negatively and cost huge sum of money to treat. To select a demulsification process for an emulsion problem, it is very important that one should know the condition that favors emulsion stability, once this is established, treatment procedure can be followed to achieve the desire result. In this study, water-in-oil emulsion was formulated with crude samples from various wells (Oredo tank B, Usan and Atala) ensuring they have different API values, their API values are 45, 27.4 and 34 respectively. Also, Usan crude was formulated with water at varying pH of 2.34, 7 and 12.7. The results show that Usan crude with lower API gravity broke out 90ml of oil in 138.5 hours (about six days) while Atala and Oredo broke out 6.0ml and 2.5ml respectively. This shows that the effect of API gravity is directly proportional to the stability. Also, the results collected from the Usan when subjected at varying pH values shows, 65ml of crude was regained from the emulsion when the pH is 2.4(acidic), 35ml of crude was recovered when the emulsion formulated with distilled water with a pH of 7 (neutral) while 14.6ml was recovered when the pH is 12.3 (alkaline). Hence from the conducted experiment it was noted that high pH value favors stability of the oil emulsion, while low pH value is unfavorable for oil emulsion stability.Keywords: Emulsion; Gravity, pH, Oil, Water
Highlights
Emulsions have been of great interest due to their occurrence in everyday life
The result of volume of oil recovered from the Usan, Atala, and Oredo formulated emulsion samples, having an API gravity of 27.4, 34.0, and 45.0 respectively with time in minutes
Emulsion with varying pH values: Based on the results presented above, 65ml of crude oil was recovered from the emulsion when the pH is 2.4, 35ml of crude oil was recovered when the emulsion formulated with distilled water with a pH of 7 while 14.6ml was recovered when the pH is 12.3
Summary
Emulsions have been of great interest due to their occurrence in everyday life. It is a fine dispersion of water-in-oil or oil-in-water with drop sizes usually in the micron range (Joblom, 2001). There are several hindrances with the emulsion approach with respect to selection and the cost of surfactant, efficiency of surfactant in stabilizing the emulsion during transportation and separation once the end point is reached (Shadi et al, 2010). Another problem associated to emulsions, their formation is costly in term of chemical used, production losses, as well as an environmental problem in case of oil-spillage (Mingyuan et al, 1992). The purpose of this study is to determine the effect of pH and API gravity on the water-in-oil emulsion stability
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