Impact of Dispersed Phase Salinity of W/O Emulsions, on Crude Oil Electrostatic Dehydration Process.

Abstract

The impact of salinity in a W/O emulsion on electrostatic dehydration is the interest of the present study. According to Stokes' law, the net force of gravity acting on a droplet is directly proportional to the difference in densities between the droplet (water) and the continuous phase (crude). Conductivity is a measure of the flow of electricity in water, so the more dissolved ions there are, the higher the conductivity. Based on this, the quantitative study with experimental design 23 with a 99% confidence interval of the effect on the electrostatic dehydration process of W/O emulsions of Merey 16 crude oil is proposed, applying a continuous treatment of DC electric field where the factors are considered: salt concentration, percentage of water and applied voltage. Based on the cumulative distribution of droplets, the Destabilizing Factor (FD) was calculated, which represents the change in fraction of droplets greater than a certain value. Two factors interact, the highest being the salt-voltage content, followed by the interaction between the percentage of water-voltage; The main effect is the salt content, where for percentages of water 10% when applied under voltage, causes an increase in the size of droplets; while for 20% water FD is favored at low salt and high voltage, while for high water % the effect of voltage and high salt content disfavors the increase in droplet size.