Flow of Oil-in-Water Emulsions Through Tubes and Porous Media

Abstract

The flow of oil-in-water macroemuisions through both porous media and capi!!ary tubes has been studiedexperimentally and described mathematically.Macroemulsions are those emulsions with most of their droplet diameters greater than 1 pm, which is the same order of magnitude as the pore constrictions. The emulsions were pumped with a positive displacement pump through several poroti media and capillary tubes connected in series. The rheo!ogical behavior of macroemulsions with oil concentrations ranging from 10 to 70 vok?bwas obtained using capillaty tube data. Emulsions with oil concentrations fess than 50% behaved like iVewtonianfluids, while those with concentration greater than 50% behaved like pseudoplastic jluids. ViscoeIastic effects were not observed for these jluiak. A correlation, which zmes both capilla~and core flow data, was developed for describing thejhw of non-Newtonian macroemu!sions through porous media. T'13led to a generid equation that reduced toDarcy's law for Newtonian fluids. The auerage -relati~eerror found when applying the method of correhrtion was * 4?4.

Modeling of flow of oil-in-water emulsions through porous media

“…Al-Faris et al (1994) reported that during flow of the O/W emulsion the permeability of porous media decreases monotonically with time. Alvarado and Marsden (1979) developed a correlation, which uses both capillary and core flow data for describing flow of non-Newtonian macroemulsions through porous media. Jin and Wojtanowicz (2014) described a model considering mass transfer of the oil phase from the produced water to the rock due to capture effects by dispersion, advection, and adsorption inside the rock.…”

The transition from water continuous to oil continuous flow pattern

“…It may further be noted that most of the world's crude oil is produced in the form of water in oil emulsions, [21][22] where a small amount of water is distributed in the oil phase. This requires a better understanding of the flow characteristics in the oil dominating regime.…”

Pipeline flow of unstable and surfactant‐stabilized emulsions

“…To our knowledge, little or no work has been reported on pipeline flow of water-in-oil (W/O) type of emulsions (where water droplets form the dispersed phase and oil forms the continuous phase) although such emulsions are equally important from a practical point of view; for example, most of the world's crude oil is produced in the form of water-in-oil emulsions rather than oil-in-water emulsions (Steinhauff, 1962;Alvarado and Marsden, 1979). Thus, understanding of the flow characteristics of water-in-oil emulsions is important for the design and operation of production gathering facilities and emulsion pipelines.…”