Chemical Demulsification of Water-in-Crude Oil Emulsions

Demulsification of crude oil-in-water emulsions by means of fungal spores

The present feature describes for the first time the application of spores from Aspergillus sp. IMPMS7 to break out crude oil-in-water emulsions (O/W). The fungal spores were isolated from marine sediments polluted with petroleum hydrocarbons. The spores exhibited the ability to destabilize different O/W emulsions prepared with medium, heavy or extra-heavy Mexican crude oils with specific gravi...

Effect of the Structure of Commercial Poly(ethylene Oxide-b-propylene Oxide) Demulsifier Bases on the Demulsification of Water-in-crude Oil Emulsions: Elucidation of the Demulsification Mechanism

Water-in-crude oil emulsions are formed during petroleum production and asphaltenes play an important role in their stabilization. Demulsifiers are added to destabilize such emulsions,however the demulsification mechanism is not completely known. In this paper, the performances of commercial poly(ethylene oxide-b-propylene oxide) demulsifiers were studied using synthetic water-in-oil emulsions ...

Crude Oil Emulsions – Composition Stability and Characterization

Direct current electrorheological stability determination of water-in-crude oil emulsions.

Emulsion stability is a fundamental determination for separation technologies. We use the critical electric field (CEF) and viscosity changes in DC electrorheological (ER) experiments in dynamic mode to establish the level of stability of water-in-crude oil emulsions previously studied through bottle tests. The CEF value corresponds to the value of electric field at which the current reaches 95...

Thermodynamic Stability of Water-in-oil Emulsions

It is well known that colloids can show phase transitions similar to the ones observed in molecular systems. Colloid-diluted and colloid-concentrated phases can coexist in thermodynamic equilibrium at certain conditions. In a previous work, the authors of this research have used this concept to study petroleum emulsions stability, applying thermodynamic perturbation theories to calculate a phas...