Surfactants as Demulsifiers

In oil production, the generation of heavy oil/water emulsion can result in significant
drop in the production rate due to the high viscosities of the emulsions. The strong
agitation and mixing that takes place at the inlet of the well bore together with the
presence of the naturally existing emulsifying agents in the crude contribute to the
formation of emulsion. Water and oil emulsion formation presents an on-going
production issue receiving considerable technical consideration. The formation of
emulsion is ultimately cause economics problem, both in terms of expensive chemicals
used and due to the daily production losses.
Effective separation of oil and water become an essential operation in order to ensure
not only the quality of the crude oil is obtained but also the quality of separated water at
the lowest cost. Due to these remarkable issues, there are number of methods that could
be applied in order to mitigate these problems such as injection of surfactants into the
formation and also surface treatment in order to disrupt the interfacial film and enhance
the speed for emulsion breaking (chemical demulsification). Downhole demulsification
of crude oil increases well production by reducing vertical flow pressure loss. There are
also other major treatments like heating or electrocoalesence but they seem not so
practical and effective.
The objective of this project is to identit)' and compare the results of different surfactants
onto the emulsion particles. These will cover lots of samples to be tested during the
separation test experiments. The results will show the effect of different surfactants on
the rate of separation of crude oil and water from the emulsion. The better the separation,
the better the demulsifier is. In spite of the volume of separation, the quality of the crude
oil and water also been focused along running the experiments. Results of such trials
have been discussed in this project that shows promising success.