Innovation Spotlight

PHASETREAT

PHASETREAT demulsifiers
an eco-friendly solution for the
separation of crude oil from water

Issue: Winter 2014

Demulsifiers from Clariant Oil Services also enable efficient

and safe production of heavy oil
Its an effect were familiar with from salad dressing: vinegar and oil dont mix very well.
But every amateur chef knows the trick to make it work: stir the two liquids with a fork or
egg whisk until a viscous mixture is obtained and theres your vinaigrette.
Water-in-oil emulsion is what chemists call this unstable mixture of innumerable tiny water
droplets in a matrix of oil. Within a few minutes, the emulsion separates out again into its
constituent phases a process that the chef can greatly slow down, however, by adding an
emulsifier like mustard or egg yolk.
Yet whats desirable in the salad bowl is problematic in crude oil production, because almost
all of the worlds oil wells produce an emulsion of oil and water. The source of water is
either a naturally-occuring presence in the reservoir or it is introduced by pumping through
injection wells to maintain the pressure needed to extract the oil. Theoretically, you could
wait for the emulsion to separate into its constituents like vinaigrette left to stand for too long,
and then skim off the lighter oil floating on the surface of the water. Unfortunately, this
takes far too long for efficient oil production. The solution is to use a demulsifier from the
PHASETREAT family to speed up this lengthy process, says Dr. Jonathan J. Wylde, Global
Head of Application Development at Clariant Oil Services.

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CLARIANT INTERNATIONAL LTD

OIL SERVICES

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Chemically speaking, PHASETREAT demulsifiers belong to the surfactant family elongated

molecules with a carbon backbone that, despite differences in detail, have one feature in
common: they possess a water-attracting (hydrophilic) and an oil-attracting (hydrophobic)
end. In an emulsion, they act as mediators at the interface between water and oil the
hydrophilic end projects into the water, the hydrophobic end into the oil. Depending on the
molecular structure of the surfactant, this mediating activity can have completely contrary
effects. Surfactants in cleaning agents act as emulsifiers, making the frying fat soluble, so to
speak, and easy to wash off the plate. These emulsifiers are also used in foods like yogurt or
in cosmetics to stabilize the emulsion of aqueous and fatty phases and maintain the desired
creamy consistency.
The opposite effect is achieved with special surfactants used as demulsifiers or emulsion
splitters in oil production. They accelerate the coalescence of the tiny water droplets into
increasingly larger droplets and thus the separation of oil and water, which is performed in a
separator vessel.
Demulsifiers have been used in oil production for almost 100 years. Clariant Oil Services
can look back on more than 50 years of experience with PHASETREAT. This experience
is critical to success, explains Clariant Oil Services expert Wylde: The properties of the
extracted oil and the requirements placed on the demulsifier differ from one oil well to the
next. The PHASETREAT range comprising several hundred products is derived from
different basic compounds we use to develop a tailored solution for each situation in cooperation with our customers. The know-how relates equally to the formulation of these
mixtures and the development of the basic components.

THE PHASETREAT MOLECULES attach at

the interface between water and oil, facilitating the coalescence of all water droplets in
the mixture and separating them from the oil.

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A particular challenge is represented by the heavy oil reservoirs that are becoming increasingly important, but are especially challenging to dehydrate and extract the unwanted water
(see Chemistry Explained). This is because the specific gravity of some heavy oils hardly
differs from that of the water. The tendency of an emulsion to separate spontaneously into
its oil and water components is correspondingly low.
The newest generation of PHASETREAT demulsifiers is highly effective: Compared to the
early era of the technology, we now need only approximately one-hundredth of the admixture
quantity to achieve a greatly improved effect. As a result, when heating the emulsion, which
in the case of heavy oil is often very viscous, the heating time, the amount of energy used and
the residence time in the separator may be reduced. This not only saves energy and lowers
costs for the user, but also actively contributes to environmental protection, says John Dunne,
Senior Vice President of Clariant Oil and Mining Services. One of the reasons for this is that
the latest formulations of PHASETREAT demulsifiers are much more efficient at separating
water from oil than conventional chemistry; not only this, they are highly biodegradable and
result in a much cleaner produced water quality after separation.
Day by day, around two million barrels of heavy oil are produced worldwide with the aid of
Clariant Oil Services PHASETREAT demulsifiers. One example is our ability to solve the
challenges encountered in producing particularly heavy offshore crude oil from around the
world, adds Dunne.
Classic, easy-to-develop oil reservoirs are unlikely to meet future global energy demands.
Many expert analysts see reservoirs of particularly heavy or impure oil long ignored because
of either high extraction costs or a lack of innovative technology as the future of global
liquid hydrocarbon supply. The enormous potential of these unconventional oil reserves,
however, can only be developed with the aid of sophisticated technology and chemistry
that also must support and protect environmental sustainability, explains Dunne. The
challenges confronting our customers in the oil industry are constantly changing. Our
PHASETREAT demulsifiers meet and exceed the challenges.

GAS

IN THE SEPARATOR VESSEL, PHASETREAT

WATER

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is added to the fluid mixture to separate oil and

water. Oil and gas are pumped into the pipeline
system, while the produced water is injected
back into the oil reservoir.

OIL

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Chemistry

EXPLAINED
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Conventional and not quite so conventional

Crude oil and how to bring it to the surface

More than 90 percent of the crude oil produced today comes from conventional reservoirs
oil resources that are more or less easy to produce and contain high-quality oil with low
viscosity; therefore, they have good flow properties. However, no two crude oils are exactly
identical, even if they are considered to be conventional. Every deposit contains a mixture
of different hydrocarbons from volatile gas to oils of differing viscosity to more-or-less
solid constituents like bitumen or wax. The demands already placed by conventional oil
production are also correspondingly variable. While the first 10 to 15 percent of a deposit
in the so-called primary phase flow naturally to the surface due to the pressure exerted
by the overlying rock formations, the effort required increases as oil production continues.
In the secondary phase, water can be pumped into the reservoir to maintain the necessary
pressure in the reservoir. In this way, depending on the reservoir, 30 to 50 percent of the oil it
contains can be brought to the surface. The final tertiary phase (or Enhanced Oil Recovery
EOR) extracts oil from the rock strata using special techniques such as injecting steam. Also
widespread is the use of special chemicals that, for example, enhance the efficacy of the injected water by making it more viscous and therefore better at displacing the oil. Surfactants
can also be added that further enhance oil production by favorably altering the interfacial
tension between the oil and water phase so as to allow preferential oil flow. These EOR
chemical and oil-water mixtures are easier to bring to the surface, but then have to be separated again using demulsifiers. Depending on the geological conditions and the properties of
the oil deposit, altogether up to 70 percent of the hydrocarbons it contains can be extracted.
Unconventional oil deposits are those which are so challenging to produce that they only
gradually become profitable as the price of oil on the world market increases or the technology
improves such that the production of oil becomes more efficient. This may be conventional
oil in unconventional locations that are difficult to access, such as the estimated reserves in
the polar regions or deepwater zones. The pre-salt reservoirs of the South Atlantic, like
the Tupi oilfield off the coast of Brazil, only discovered as recently as 2006, belong in this
category. Up to eight billion barrels of good quality, extractable crude oil are present at this
location but under a four-kilometer-thick layer of salt and rock that, moreover, is located
below 2,000 meters of water.
Unconventional crude oil in the narrower sense is the term used for deposits of the soughtafter hydrocarbons that require great effort to extract and convert into usable oil. Three main
types are involved: oil sands, found in vast amounts in Canada and Venezuela, are mixtures
of bitumen, water, sand and clay. Almost just as viscous as the bitumen obtained from them
are the heavy and ultra heavy oils of Venezuela. Finally, oil shale is a sedimentary rock rich
in hydrocarbons, the largest deposits of which are in the USA.

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CHEMISTRY EXPLAINED

Common to all three is that the oil contained can only be extracted and converted into usable
crude oil with the aid of heat and special chemicals such as PHASETREAT demulsifiers.
Although this has not yet been worthwhile for many of the known deposits, the potential of
unconventional crude oil deposits is nevertheless enormous; they represent by far the greatest
proportion of global resources of fossil fuel. As conventional reservoirs are increasingly exhausted, it is only a matter of time that their extraction will become commercially interesting. What was unconventional yesterday could be quite normal tomorrow.

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PHASETREAT CHEMISTRIES contribute to

safe oil production while minimizing impact on

the environment onshore and offshore.

INFORMATIVE LINKS
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