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Sharul Sham Dol
Lim Jit Sen



Authors and WSEAS

Sharul Sham Dol
Lim Jit Sen


WSEAS Transactions on Environment and Development


Print ISSN: 1790-5079
E-ISSN: 2224-3496

Volume 14, 2018

Notice: As of 2014 and for the forthcoming years, the publication frequency/periodicity of WSEAS Journals is adapted to the 'continuously updated' model. What this means is that instead of being separated into issues, new papers will be added on a continuous basis, allowing a more regular flow and shorter publication times. The papers will appear in reverse order, therefore the most recent one will be on top.


Volume 14, 2018



The Effect of Dissipation Energy on Pressure Drop in Flow-Induced Oil-Water Emulsions Pipeline

AUTHORS: Sharul Sham Dol, Lim Jit Sen

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ABSTRACT: In the oil production industry, crude oil is usually produced together with water from the reservoirs, and the immiscible mixtures of oil and water result in emulsions flow in the transporting pipelines. Emulsions cause higher pressure drop, create difficulties in water-oil separation process, require more retention time in the separation vessels, take larger volume in separators and pipelines, and affect the flow behaviors due to changes in density and viscosity of the fluid. The presence of stable emulsions also reduces the quality of crude oil and causes more problems in the downstreams refinery operations, such as corrosion and higher heat capacity. In this research work, a lab-scale flow loop was constructed to investigate the formation of emulsions solely through flow shear, and the effect of emulsions on pressure drop. The effect of emulsions on flow pressure drop is established with the presentation of flow pressure drop profile and dissipation energy profile. The flow pressure drop profile shows that as more stable emulsions droplets are formed at higher flow rate, the pressure drop continues to increase until a maximum peak. The maximum peak is also the phase inversion point, where further water addition beyond this point triggers phase inversion of the emulsions system. Higher flow rate also brings the emulsions system to an earlier phase inversion. Stable water-in-oil (W/O) emulsions, which require dissipation energy to form, resulted in significant pressure drop. The dissipation energy is directly proportional to the pressure drop and flow velocity. After the phase inversion, the pressure drop starts to decrease, until it reaches the pressure drop of pure water, due to the presence of unstable emulsions, irregular size distribution of emulsion droplets, non-aggregated emulsions with less dense packing, and water as the continuous phase. The flow pressure drop profile is an important optimization tool in the industry to determine the values of flow rate and water content, in mitigating the adverse pressure drop effect of emulsions.

KEYWORDS: pressure drop, emulsification, water-in-oil emulsions, dissipation energy, phase inversion point

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WSEAS Transactions on Environment and Development, ISSN / E-ISSN: 1790-5079 / 2224-3496, Volume 14, 2018, Art. #18, pp. 182-189


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