Experimental Study On Coalescence Separation And Optimization For Water In Oil Emulsion

The removal of emulsified water from diesel has attracted much attention in recent years for its important influence on the quality of diesel oil. In this paper, in order to select the op-timal material for the separation of water-oil emulsion, fiber-coalescers were used to separate trace water from diesel oil, and then the optimization experiments according to orthogonal optimization principle were conducted to optimize the three parameters, including porosity of fiber bed, bed length and settling section length.It was found that glass fiber was the ideal material for the separation of water-diesel emulsion compared to TPFE and PP fiber. There was a stable point at which the change of flow has little effect on the separation efficiency during the coalescence separation of water in oil. The porosity of fiber bed, bed length and settling section length all have a weakening in-fluence on the velocity and the separation efficiency at stable point. The bed length is the most significant parameter with notable influence, and the porosity of fiber bed follows, but only the bed length has a significant influence on the separation efficiency at stable point. There is a limited improvement of separation efficiency under steady condition by increasing bed length, when the bed length reaches to 400mm. After optimizing, the bed length is 400 mm, porosity is 0.77 and settlement length is 360 mm. When the concentration of water in diesel oil is 800-1200 mg/kg, the separation efficiency at stable point will achieve 77%, and the velocity will reach 30 m/h. when the treatment of the industrial dehydrator reaches 80 m3/h, the concentration of water in diesel oil is lower than 300 mg/kg. The results of this pa-per can provide basic designing reference for the industrial application of fiber-coalescers.