Destabilization and interaction mechanisms of emulsions in oil sands production

拟议项目的重点是加拿大和全球石油工业面临的一个具有挑战性的问题：乳化液的不稳定性和石油生产过程中的相关相互作用机制，特别是在加拿大油砂生产。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。露天开采和现场提取技术，如蒸汽辅助重力泄油（SAGD）已被石油工业广泛用于沥青提取。热水和高压蒸汽分别用于露天开采和SAGD操作，以从油砂矿床中提取沥青。在这些水/蒸汽辅助操作中形成油包水（W/O）、水包油（O/W）或甚至更复杂的乳液。稳定的乳液是非常不期望的，因为它们会引起严重的技术挑战并显著增加石油生产中的操作成本。 在这项研究中，我们提出了在油砂开采的表面开采和SAGD操作的环境条件下表征油/水界面性质，评价使用商业破乳剂（EB）和反相破乳剂（REB）的乳状液的破乳和油/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理，并根据所发现的基本相互作用原理开发出更有效的化学试剂。预计拟议的研究将提供有效的解决方案（例如，有效的化学试剂产品和新型破乳技术），为石油工业解决具有挑战性的乳化问题。待阐明的基本分子间和表面相互作用机制将帮助行业赞助商和油砂行业进一步开发更有效和经济的方法来使油砂生产的相关过程中的不期望的乳液不稳定和去除，从而消除相关的挑战性问题（例如，结垢和腐蚀）和降低运行成本。

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.