Destabilization and interaction mechanisms of emulsions in oil sands production

拟议的项目侧重于加拿大和全球石油工业面临的一个具有挑战性的问题：乳剂的不稳定以及石油生产过程中相关的相互作用机制，特别是在加拿大油砂生产中。加拿大拥有世界第三大石油储量，仅次于沙特阿拉伯和委内瑞拉。露天矿开采和就地开采技术，如蒸汽辅助重力排水（SAGD）已被石油工业广泛应用于沥青开采。温水和高压蒸汽分别用于露天开采和SAGD作业，以从油砂矿床中提取沥青。在这些水/蒸汽辅助作业中，油包水（W/O）、水包油（O/W）甚至更复杂的乳液都会形成。稳定的乳剂是非常不受欢迎的，因为它们会带来严重的技术挑战，并显著增加石油生产的运营成本。在本研究中，我们建议表征油砂开采中露天开采和SAGD作业环境条件下的油水界面性质，使用商用破乳剂（EB）和反相破乳剂（REB）评估乳状液的破乳和油水分离性能，阐明有助于乳状液稳定和不稳定的相互作用机制。并根据发现的基本相互作用原理开发出更有效的化学试剂。预计该研究将为石油工业解决具有挑战性的乳化液问题提供有效的解决方案（如有效的化学试剂产品和新型破乳技术）。分子间和表面相互作用的基本机制将有助于行业赞助商和油砂行业进一步开发更有效和经济的方法，以稳定和去除油砂生产相关过程中不需要的乳剂，消除相关的挑战性问题（如结垢和腐蚀），并降低运营成本。

The proposed project focuses on a challenging issue confronting the Canadian and global petroleum industry: destabilization of emulsions and the associated interaction mechanisms in oil production processes, particularly in the Canadian oil sands production. Canada has the third largest oil reserves in the world, after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. Surface mining and in situ extraction techniques such as steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) have been widely used by oil industry for bitumen extraction. Warm water and high pressure steam are used in surface mining and SAGD operations, respectively, to extract the bitumen from the oil sands deposits. Water-in-oil (W/O), oil-in-water (O/W) or even more complex emulsions are formed in these water/steam-assisted operations. The stable emulsions are highly undesired because they can cause serious technical challenges and significantly increase the operating cost in oil production.In this research, we propose to characterize the oil/water interfacial properties under the environmental conditions of surface mining and SAGD operations in oil sands production, evaluate the demulsification and oil/water separation performance of emulsions using commercial emulsion breakers (EB) and reverse emulsion breakers (REB), elucidate the interaction mechanisms that contribute to the stabilization and destabilization of emulsions, and develop more effective chemical reagents based on the fundamental interaction principles discovered. It is expected that the proposed research will provide effective solutions (e.g., effective chemical reagent products and novel demulsification technologies) to the oil industry on the challenging emulsion issues. The fundamental intermolecular and surface interaction mechanisms to be elucidated will help the industry sponsor and oil sands industry further develop more effective and economical approaches to destabilize and remove the undesired emulsions in the related processes of oil sands production, eliminating the associated challenging problems (e.g., fouling and corrosion) and lowering the operating cost.