Mitigating Noncoalescence and Chain Formation in an Electrocoalescer by Electric Field Modulation

In the petroleum industry, dehydration and desalting of a crude oil-brine emulsion are critical to further processing and refining of crude. The process of dehydration and desalting is typically done in large units called electrocoalescers. Enhancing the performance of an electrocoalescer includes the ability to dehydrate the emulsion in a shorter time, that is to increase the rate of separation of water while keeping the operation safe. The work proposes the enhancement of separation based on AC electric field modulation. The modulated waveform is composed of a high amplitude electric field step, followed by a low amplitude electric field step, and the process is repeated. The work demonstrates the efficacy of the technique through several experiments and their analysis. The work includes designing and optimizing the electrical waveform and then demonstrating the faster kinetics of electrocoalescence achieved in comparison with the conventional practice. The main advantage of modulation is facilitation of chaining of drops during the high voltage period, followed by their effective coalescence in the low voltage period. The effect of the modulation field and period has been investigated, and optimization of the time periods of the high field and the low field steps is carried out. Our analysis indicates that an increase in the fraction of the total period spanned by the high field improves the water separation, while a relatively weaker dependence is found on the total period. The electric field was applied both in directions parallel and perpendicular to the gravity, and performances were compared. It was found that the parallel configuration was better than the perpendicular configuration.