During the production of crude oil, associated water in the reservoir is often co-produced, forming oil/water emulsions. This water can lead to corrosion and other problems in subsequent pipeline transport and it must therefore be removed. Typically, heat and chemical additives are used to help flocculate and coalesce the water droplets (demulsification). In this work, we modeled the additive assisted demulsification process and examined the behavior of additives at the water-oil interface using molecular dynamics (MD) and dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) simulations. Specifically, we studied the effect of additives on the interfacial tension of water-oil interfaces, and the interaction of additives with surface-active species present in the crude oil. We also examined the displacement of surface-active species by additives and coalescence of additive-coated water droplets using steered DPD simulations. We discuss the advantages of these simulation techniques for investigating interfacial phenomena, but also present some of the shortcomings and areas for potential improvement.

Modeling of the effect of additives in demulsification of crude oils

256th National Meeting (2018)

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