Research On Evaluation Method Of Transportation Of Heavy Oil As Oil-in-water Emulsion

Reducing viscosity by emulsification is a very effective way to gather andtransfer heavy oil. However, it has not been widely used because of the complexity ofO/W emulsion’s properties.Through laboratory experiments screen out the optimum emulsifier compoundformula which can reduce the viscosity of ChenNan heavy oil by99.7%. On this basis,get the optimal condition to prepare emulsion by studying the impacts of differentadditives concentration, emulsifying temperature, emulsifying strength, moisturecontent and others on the viscosity and microstructure of emulsion The optimalemulsion preparation condition is that: additives dosage is1%wt., emulsifyingtemperature is50℃, and emulsifying strength is2000r/min×5min.Design pipe flow simulator, and prove that it can satisfy experimentalrequirements by experiments and analysises. then propose and validate the pressuredrop calculation equation of the simulator., in the meanwhile, use the simulator to testthe viscosity of emulsion and simulate pipeline flow of O/W emulsion. The resultsshow that error between the simulator and rheometer is less than15%.And it isshowed that O/W emulsion with25%moisture content has been flowing in the circuitfor half an hour, after that, emulsion inversion turns up and pressure drop in the pipehas been increased gradually, however, O/W emulsion with30%moisture content hasnot inversed after four hours’ flowing, which can conclude that ChenNan heavy oilcan be transported as O/W emulsion when the moisture content of emulsion is morethan30%. Therefore the simulator can be used to test the stability and viscosity ofemulsion, to simulate the pipe flow, and to provide theoretical basis for the fieldtransportation of heavy oil O/W emulsion.