Abstract
ABSTRACTThe crude oil is in most cases accompanied with water and natural gas. For this reason, it is important to understand the rheology of the oil emulsion. There are already many works relating to rheology of the oil/water emulsion. However, studies on high-pressure rheology of water/crude oil emulsion in the presence of CH4 are rare. In this work, light crude oil with characteristics of high wax content, which is typical in Northwest China, was studied. The rheology of water/crude oil emulsion in the presence of CH4 under various conditions were fully studied. The results show that the crude oil emulsion showed obvious characteristics of non-Newtonian fluid at a lower temperature. Before water fraction reached a certain limit, the viscosity increases with the increase of water fraction, when water fraction reaches and exceeds the limit the emulsion viscosity drops with the increase of water fraction. The shear stress–shear rate curves become similar as the increase of temperature, indicating the decreasing effect of temperature on the relation between shear stress and shear rate. When the pressure reaches 8 MPa, the shear stress measured with CH4 in the system surpasses that measured without CH4. At higher pressure, CH4 shows obvious influence on the rheology.
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