Experimental and theoretical study of crude oil pretreatment using low-frequency ultrasonic waves

Ali Khajehesamedini; Ali Sadatshojaie; Payam Parvasi; Mohammad Reza Rahimpour; Mohammad Mehdi Naserimojarad

doi:10.1016/j.ultsonch.2018.05.032

Experimental and theoretical study of crude oil pretreatment using low-frequency ultrasonic waves

Ultrason Sonochem. 2018 Nov:48:383-395. doi: 10.1016/j.ultsonch.2018.05.032. Epub 2018 May 29.

Authors

Ali Khajehesamedini¹, Ali Sadatshojaie², Payam Parvasi³, Mohammad Reza Rahimpour⁴, Mohammad Mehdi Naserimojarad⁵

Affiliations

¹ Programa de Engenharia Química/COPP, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro 21941-972, Brazil.
² Chemical and Petroleum Engineering Department, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran.
³ Department of Chemical, Petroleum and Gas Engineering, Shiraz University of Technology, Shiraz, Iran; Department of Chemical Engineering, School of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, Shiraz University, Shiraz 71345, Iran.
⁴ Department of Chemical Engineering, School of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, Shiraz University, Shiraz 71345, Iran. Electronic address: rahimpor@shirazu.ac.ir.
⁵ School of Mechatronic Systems Engineering, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada.

PMID: 30080563
DOI: 10.1016/j.ultsonch.2018.05.032

Abstract

In this work, an ultrasound experimental setup was designed to investigate the feasibility of using low-frequency ultrasonic waves as a substitute to reduce the consumption of chemical demulsifiers in the pretreatment of crude oil. The experiments were planned to study the effects of irradiation time, ultrasonic field intensity and initial water content on the efficiency of separation. The results of experiments showed that by selecting a proper irradiation time and field intensity, it is possible to decrease the usage of demulsifiers by 50%. Moreover, a population balance model was proposed to explicate the experimental data. A hybrid coalescence model was developed to determine the frequency of aggregation. The parameters of the model were estimated by linear regression. The parameter estimation was performed using a parallel execution of the particle swarm optimization algorithm. The results of the model showed a decent agreement with the experimental data.

Keywords: Coalescence model; Crude oil; Low-frequency ultrasonic waves; Population balance model; W/O Emulsion.