Investigation of the Effects of Parameters on Viscosities and Correlation of Heavy Oil and Stability of Its Emulsion

Abstract

Heavy oil becomes more popular as new energy sources due to the current oil prices and enormous amount of heavy oil reserves. However, heavy oil is difficult to produce because of its viscosity. Recently thermal recovery, like steam injection, is a common method for heavy-oil production. During oil production with steam, crude oils are typically produced as water in crude-oil emulsions. This work investigates the effect of parameters such as temperature, water content in emulsions and shear rate on viscosities and stability of heavy oil and emulsions. It is demonstrated that the viscosity of the emulsions decreases with increasing temperature. Moreover, correlation of the effect of temperature on viscosity has been established and the numerical results get along well with the experimental results. Furthermore, the viscosity of oil enhances with higher water content. In addition, shear rate plays a significant role in viscosity reduction as shear rate increases. Also large shear stress is applied in order to break up the droplet and droplet sizes become smaller and it affects the stability of emulsion.