Real-time chemical process control incorporating microfluidic devices

在过去的十年中，微流体和微机电系统（MEMS）领域取得了巨大的进步。这种系统可能会彻底改变石化工业的过程控制。与Wave Control Systems Ltd.拟议的合作旨在展示将基于微流体的传感器用于自动化过程流质量管理的好处。Wave Control公司生产一种专利化学进料喷射系统，该系统旨在为石油工厂的工艺流程提供非常精确的处理化学品剂量。我们打算在工艺流程中放置微流体传感器，并将其与化学进料注射系统连接起来。因此，当传感器测量到工艺流中某些变量的变化时，它将触发化学注射系统以适当的剂量注入处理。这种具有感官反馈的自动控制系统将被建立并应用于解决石油工业中普遍存在的问题，即油和水的脱乳化或分离。我们实验室正在研制一种用于检测油包水乳剂稳定性的微流控芯片。这可以用来测量被称为脱乳剂的特殊化学品的功效和剂量，这种化学品通常被石油工业用于脱乳剂。Engage项目的具体目标是开发一种可以与Wave Control的化学进料注射技术集成的芯片。该组合系统将检测油包水乳状液的稳定性，向加药系统提供信号，加药系统将向乳状液中注入所需数量的脱乳化剂以使其不稳定。这样的系统将立即为Wave Control提供一个大大改进的产品组合，通过防止紊乱、设备结垢和停机来提高Alberta重油生产设施的可靠性。此外，添加剂化学品的最佳和准确剂量，不多也不少，为工业用户节省了大量成本。油砂行业采用这种微流体控制技术可以培育阿尔伯塔省的微纳米技术部门。

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.