General Knowledge about Crude Oil Demulsifiers

What are crude oil demulsifiers ? What are their characteristics? The mechanism of crude oil demulsifiers is a phase transfer-reverse deformation mechanism. After the addition of a demulsifier, a phase transition occurs, meaning it can generate a surfactant of the opposite type to the emulsion formed by the emulsifier (reverse demulsifier).
This type of demulsifier reacts with hydrophobic emulsifiers to form complexes, thus causing the emulsifier to lose its emulsifying properties. Another mechanism is the collision-breaking of the interfacial film.
Under heating or stirring conditions, demulsifiers have many opportunities to collide with the interfacial film of the emulsion, or adsorb onto the interfacial film, or displace and replace some of the surface-active substances, thereby breaking down the interfacial film, greatly reducing its stability, and causing flocculation, aggregation, and demulsification.

Crude oil emulsions are frequently encountered in the production and refining of oil products. Most of the world’s major crude oils are produced in the form of an emulsion. An emulsion consists of at least two immiscible liquids. One of them is suspended on the other liquid as an extremely fine dispersion, such as droplets approximately 1 mm in diameter.

One of these liquids is usually water, and the other is often oil. The oil can be dispersed very finely in the water. In this case, the emulsion is an oil-in-water emulsion. The water is called the continuous phase, and the oil is called the dispersed phase. Conversely, if the oil is the continuous phase and the water is the dispersed phase, the emulsion is called a water-in-oil emulsion. Most crude oil emulsions fall into this category.
That’s what we’ve been discussing today: crude oil demulsifiers . Do you understand them now? We’ll share more about crude oil demulsifiers next time.