Viscosity reduction of Iraqi crude oil by different additives

Abstract

The high viscosity of heavy oil is a crucial factor that strongly affects its up-stream recovering, down-stream surface transporting and refining processes. Economical methods for recovering the heavy oil and reducing is very important and related to capital and/or operating cost. This research studies the treatment of Iraqi heavy crude oil, which characterize with high viscosity and low API which makes transportation of heavy crude oil a difficult mission, needs for treatment to reduce viscosity for facilitating transportation and processing. Iraqi heavy crude oil was used Sharqi Baghdad, which obtained from Baghdad east oil fields with API 22.2°.Many kinds of additives were used to reduce the viscosity, experiments were performed on the heavy oil sample using different solvents (Ethanol, n-Propanol and methyl ethyl ketone (MEK)). Among all the types used, the MEK was found most efficient viscosity reducer of heavy crude oil, the maximum viscosity reduction reached to 3.78 cSt at 75°C and 26 API at 25°C while the other solvents for n-Propanol 5.85 cSt at 75°C and 24.61 API at 25°C while for ethanol 5.96 cSt at 75°C and 27 API at 27°C