Population balance modelling of an electrocoalescer

Abstract

The mechanism of dehydration of a water-in-oil emulsion is complex and involves the growth of an emulsion of polydispersed water droplets in oil, under an electric field, and their gravitational settling and phase separation. In this work, a simple configuration is chosen to understand the mechanism of this complex process. A population balance-based model is developed to predict the performance of an electrocoalescer. The model explicitly accounts for the coalescence of water drops by the action of dipolar forces and gravity settling. A distributed parameter plug flow and a tank-in-series model are developed to account for the gravity settling. The dynamics of electrocoalescence are captured by analyzing the drop size distribution and mean diameter along with the height of the coalescer and time. A simplified model - considering that monodispersity prevails throughout the process is also developed, and the separation curves are compared with the polydispersed system. The effect of operational parameters, such as the strength of the electric field, water cut, viscosity of oil, the height of the coalescer, and polydispersity in the initial drop size distribution, is investigated. The main insight from this work is that there are essentially three stages of electrocoalescence, a slow initial incubation stage where droplets grow to around 1 mm in size without much settling, followed by a rapid settling of these droplets to set in the fast coalescence stage where most water is removed to result in a lean emulsion, followed by a slow simultaneous electrocoalescence and separation stage of this lean emulsion to result in a final separation. A scaled masterplot for the performance of an electrocoalescer, encompassing the effect of the process parameters is obtained. The model also suggests that electrocoalescence essentially leads to a polydisperse system and a population balance approach is critical to its analysis.