Mimicking the crude oil and heavy fuel oil (HFO)‎ demulsification process in power p lants for preparing a new demulsifiers

Abstract EN

Water–in–oil emulsions are a big challenge in the production and processing ofcrude oil due to its bad influence on the fundamental and practical aspects of industrialfacilities.

Researches for decades gave this phenomena a great deal in the planning toconstruct power plants, refineries, oil companies and other industrial facilities that usescrude oil as a raw material.

In order to overcome the disadvantages and hazards of water–in–oil emulsions researchers used chemical, electrical, thermal and mechanical methodsindividually or in combination.

The chemical method has gained the main interest due toits ease of use and economic feasibility.

Demulsifiers have been used extensively to solvethe problem of water in oil emulsions.

The choice of using the right combination ofchemicals had been reached after studying many factors such as cost and safety.

Thisresearch addresses many fundamental and practical aspects regarding demulsifiers and oildemulsification aiming to find the best selection of chemicals that can be used to treatcrude oil before using, refining or transporting it.

The crude oil in this research had beendemulsified and tested by the spectroil test method while the bottle test method had notbeen used to mimic the demulsification process used in power plant.

The work was carriedout using two types of oil, crude oil (containing 7 ppm Na and K salts concentration) andheavy fuel oil HFO (containing 12 ppm Na and K salts concentration).

The crude oilsamples were taken from Al – Hilla 2 power plant while the HFO samples were takenfrom South Baghdad 2 power plant.

The results showed that the water miscible chemicalsand chemicals with sufficient solubility that used as a demulsifiers like the acrylicderivatives gave the best demulsification when using more wash water percentage.

Whilethe combination of water miscible chemicals and chemicals with sufficient solubility andoil soluble chemicals gave the best results in treating heavy fuel oil while using less washwater percentage.