Theoretical and experimental investigation of desalting and dehydration of crude oil by assistance of ultrasonic irradiation

Abstract

In this paper desalting/dehydration process of crude oil by ultrasonic irradiation in a novel batch standing-wave resonator reactor is studied both theoretically and experimentally. The effect of main parameters including ultrasonic irradiation parameters, namely irradiation input power and irradiation time, and also operating parameters, such as temperature and injected water, on the removal efficiencies of salt and water is examined. The obtained results demonstrate that finding the optimum values of the above mentioned parameters is important to prevent a significant decrease in the removal efficiencies of water and especially salt. Thus, crude oil was subjected to optimal ultrasonic irradiation with an input power of 57.7 W, and irradiation time of 6.2 min at temperature of 100 °C. The injected water to dissolve the salt of crude oil was 7 vol.%. Also, the applied settling time and dosage of chemical demulsifier were 60 min and 2 ppm, respectively. Under these optimum conditions the removal efficiencies of the desalting/dehydration process were 84% and 99.8%, respectively, which are suitable for refineries. Also, based on the optimal experimental data, two inferential estimators are developed to obtain the relationships between the salt and water removal efficiencies, and input energy density. These empirical relationships can offer a proper estimation for the salt and water removal efficiencies with irradiation input energy.

Acoustic separation of oil droplets, colloidal particles and their mixtures in a microfluidic cell

“…Such a combination of light hydrocarbon oil droplets and solid silicate particles is representative of produced water streams encountered in crude oil production. Prior ultrasound separation studies have targeted a wide range of oil production related applications, such as tar recovery from oily sands, desalination and dehydration of crude oil, and oil separation from water [18][19][20][21]. The rapid development of acoustic microfluidics based test platforms, as targeted in the present work, will hopefully contribute to the faster implementation of ultrasound assisted industrial scale applications.…”

Effect ­­­­­of ultrasonic irradiation treatment on rheological behaviour of extra heavy crude oil: A solution method for transportation improvement

“…In light of the above‐mentioned considerations, several methods have been applied to solve the problems regarding the transportation of heavy and extra heavy crude oil through pipelines. For example, viscosity reduction by means of dilution with light compounds, heating, or formation of oil‐in‐water emulsions is a common method. Another solution is reducing the pipeline friction by drag reduction or annular flow through pipelines .…”

“…Recently, ultrasonic treatment has been applied in different industrial oil issues . The relevant literature show that ultrasonic treatment has considerable effects on various processes in producing and refining crude oil like removing asphaltene precipitation from porous rocks, well drilling, increasing oil recovery, desalting, and dehydration …”

An experimental study on the motion of water droplets in oil under ultrasonic irradiation

“…According to the previous mesoscopic-scale experiments performed by Check and Mowla [14] and Ye et al [19], there exists an optimum input power, i.e. the acoustic intensity in this paper, under which the removal efficiencies of the desalting/dehydration process were the highest.…”

“…Kotayusov et al [13] theoretically deduced that the optimum frequency for droplets cohesion was higher than 10 kHz. Check et al [14] evaluated the effects of ultrasonic power, irradiation time, and temperature on water removal from crude oil and provided optimal parameters theoretically and experimentally. Nii et al [15] investigated the mechanism of demulsification under ultrasonic irradiation by observing the formation and lifting process of emulsion flocculates.…”