Application of a novel surface-active green demulsifier for demulsification of field crude oil emulsion

ABSTRACT

In the petroleum industry, generally surface-active chemicals are used to break the crude oil emulsion. But these chemicals are toxic and less biodegradable, which can cause environmental pollution. Therefore, in this paper, eco-friendly demulsifiers (LA1 and LA2) were synthesized by esterification based on fatty acid having low cost and biodegradability. It was characterized by FTIR, NMR, DLS analysis, and TGA. The synthesized demulsifiers were comprehensively characterized by evaluating the micellization parameters such as CMC, A_min, etc. The demulsification performance of synthesized demulsifiers was studied through the static bottle test method. The effect of temperature, demulsifier concentration, pH, settling time, and water content on the demulsification efficiency was thoroughly examined. The result shows that both demulsifiers have excellent surface-active properties. The demulsification mechanism of demulsifiers was elucidated by measuring dynamic interfacial tension and rheological behavior. The bottle test results indicated that the LA1 demulsifier gave 100% separation efficiency at 70°C in 90 min, which performed better than the commercial demulsifier. The present study will give a new route for the eco-friendly and cost-effective treatment of asphaltene-based crude oil emulsion.

KEYWORDS:

• Emulsion
• surface-active
• demulsification
• interfacial tension
• biodegradable

Acknowledgments

We thank OIDB, India [Project No: 4/3/2020-OIDB/1625] for the financial support. The authors were also like to thank ONGC Mehsana for providing crude oil for experiment purposes. Partial financial support as an institute assistantship and instrumental facility from IIT(ISM) Dhanbad was gratefully acknowledged.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Statement of Novelty

• Single-step synthesis reaction and low-cost raw material reduces cost of demulsifier production which in turn reduce the emulsion processing cost.

• The synthesized demulsifier is biodegradable and eco-friendly, confirmed through biodegradability test.

• Due to its excellent dehydration rate, the time requires to separate the water and oil from the emulsion is relatively less.

• Demulsification studies were performed on Indian field emulsion (collected from Western field of India) using biodegradable synthesized demulsifier.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the OIDB [4/3/2020-OIDB/1625].