Developing effective chemical solutions for treating emulsions and fouling issues in oil sands production and the associated interfacial interaction mechanisms

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The proposed project focuses on a challenging issue confronting the Canadian and global petroleum industry: destabilization of emulsions, addressing fouling issues and the associated interfacial interaction mechanisms in oil production, particularly in the Canadian oil sands production. Canada has the third largest oil reserves in the world. 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, oil-in-water or even more complex emulsions are formed in these water/steam-assisted operations. The stable emulsions and fouling phenomena on different facilities are highly undesired which 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 selected emulsion breakers (EB) and reverse emulsion breakers (REB), assess the effects of antifoulants on mitigation of fouling phenomena, and further elucidate the interaction mechanisms that contribute to the stabilization and destabilization of emulsions and fouling/antifouling phenomena. We plan to develop more effective chemical solutions based on the fundamental interaction principles discovered. It is expected that the proposed research will provide effective solutions (e.g., effective chemical reagent products, novel demulsification or antifouling technologies) to the oil industry on the challenging emulsion and fouling 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 remove the undesired emulsions in related oil production processes, eliminating the associated challenging problems (e.g., fouling) and lowering the operating cost.