Electromagnetic Heating for the Separation of Water-Oil Emulsion

Abstract

Water in oil emulsion is considered as a serious problem in petroleum sector, it impacts both production costs and environmental restrictions. The presence of emulsions in crude oil will lower the quality of the crude itself, increase operating costs due to emulsions separation, cause corrosion to the transport system, and contaminate catalyst used in the refining process. Emulsions formation in the pipeline is undesirable because emulsions will cause negative impact or quandaries to the field. The most common techniques for water—oil separation is using of an electric field with inorganic salts in a demulsification process. In the present work, a new green technique depends on electromagnetic waves of microwave irradiation was accomplished to achieve the separation without using any chemicals. The experimental part utilized a microwave reactor the emulsions were prepared in a concentration of water to oil was 40 vol % two operating variables were utilized as follow: power 200–1000 W and time 40–200 s. The experiments were designed by using central composite rotatable design method with two variables. A Statistical software was utilized to achieve the optimization process to obtain the optimum conditions. The results showed that the optimum separation was produced at 800–900 W power and 150–200 s of treatment time. It was proved that microwave technique is considered as cost effective and environmental friendly technique. And it shows the capability of microwave technology for enhance the demulsification of water-oil emulsion in a short time.