Study on Demulsification of Crude Oil Emulsions by Microwave Chemical Method

Abstract

The demulsifying and separating experiments of crude oil emulsion were performed by using the heating method, the thermal chemical method, the microwave radiating method, and the microwave chemical method separately. The water content of this emulsion was 78 v/v%, and the type was water‐in‐oil (w/o). The influence tendencies of the key factors on demulsification effect were explored by changing the heating temperature, the demulsifier amount used and the microwave radiating time in this paper. With the microwave chemical experiments on the self‐made emulsions of different water content, the demulsification rate and separation efficiency were explored. The type of these emulsions were oil‐in‐water (o/w), water‐in‐oil (w/o) and the multiple type, related to the water content scopes which were less than 30 v/v%, more than 70 v/v% and between them, respectively. The separation effect by the microwave chemical method for the high water content crude oil emulsion was better than that of emulsion with lower water content. For the crude oil used in this experiment, the result could be obtained that the separation efficiency was about 95 v/v% under the conditions of 50 ppm of demulsifier, 10 seconds radiation time, and 1 minute settling time for the microwave chemical method.