Effect of chemical Breaking Agents on Water-in-Crude Oil Emulsion System

Emulsified water is generally present in crude oil as a result of the mixing occurring during production operations. The formation of emulsions leads problems in production and also transportation. Therefore, they need to demulsify through demulsification process. This research is to study the effect of chemical demulsifier in order to separate the water and oil from water in oil emulsions. Chemical demulsification consist of the addition of small amount of breaking agent to enhance the phase separation. Thus, there have four groups of breaking agents have been selected which were consisted with amine, natural, polyhydric and alcohol demulsifiers group. Each group of demulsifiers has been tested on stable emulsions. Sample emulsions were prepared by using Tapis blended with heavy crude oil and Span83 was added to enhance emulsions stability. After mix the demulsifiers into the emulsions, they were left for gravity settling process. From the research work, found that amine demulsifier group exhibited the highest efficiency to break the emulsion compared to polyhydric, alcohol and natural group. This result was influenced by the hydrophobicity and hydrophilicity characteristic of the breaking agent. Those factors have effect the solubility of the chemical demulsifier either more soluble to oil or water phase. Beside, the molecular weight of the demulsifiers also affects the efficiency of the demulsification process.