PERFORMANCE OF HEAVY OIL DEHYDRATORS

Abstract

Relationships between performance of electric dehydrators and certain physical properties of oilfield emulsion are identified and described; size distributions in emulsions charged to electric units and in treated effluents are compared with distributions expected from typical dispersion processes and from Stokes' law sedimentation; differences between results from electrically induced and mechanically induced separations are reported, as are effects on droplet size distributions of deliberately induced variations in electric field.