Real-time chemical process control incorporating microfluidic devices

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Tremendous progress has been made in the areas of microfluidics and micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) over the past decade. Such systems can potentially revolutionize process control in petrochemical industries. The proposed collaboration with Wave Control Systems Ltd. is aimed toward demonstrating the benefits of incorporating microfluidics based sensors for automated process stream quality management. Wave Control manufactures a patented chemical feed injection system, which is designed to deliver very accurate doses of treatment chemicals to the process streams in petroleum plants. We intend to place microfluidic sensors in the process streams, and connect these with the chemical feed injection system. Thus, when the sensor measures a change in some variable in the process stream, it will trigger the chemical injection system to inject a treatment at an appropriate dose. This automatic control system with a sensory feedback will be built and applied to solve a ubiquitous problem of the petroleum industry, namely, de-emulsification, or separation of oil and water. Our laboratory is developing a microfluidic chip for detecting the stability of water-in-oil emulsions. This can be used to measure the efficacy and dosage of specialty chemicals called de-emulsifiers, commonly employed by the petroleum industry for de-emulsification. The specific objective of this Engage project will be to develop a chip that can be integrated with the chemical feed injection technology of Wave Control. The combined system will detect the stability of a water-in-oil emulsion, provide signals to the dosing system, which will inject a required quantity of de-emulsifier to the emulsion to destabilize it. Such systems will immediately give Wave Control a vastly improved product portfolio to enhance the reliability of the heavy oil production facilities in Alberta through prevention of upset conditions, equipment fouling, and downtime. In addition, optimal and accurate dosing of the additive chemicals, no more and no less, results in significant cost savings for the industrial users. Adoption of such microfluidic control technologies by the oil sands industry can nurture the micro-nano technology sector in Alberta.