Modeling of Inversion Point for Heavy Oil-Water Emulsion Systems

Summary As the world's demand for oil increases, more heavy oil reservoirs are being discovered, drilled, and produced. However, heavy oil production brings new challenges. One of the challenges is the formation of emulsions. Emulsions can cause high pressure losses, resulting in transportation and pumping problems and separation. The inversion point, at which continuous and dispersed phases in an emulsion changes, needs to be studied to improve knowledge of heavy oil-water emulsions. A new mathematical model was developed in this study using fundamental thermodynamics and conservation of mass laws to predict the inversion point of an emulsion system. Simulation results indicate that the properties of surfactant, emulsion droplet size, and standard chemical potentials of the liquid phases play a very important role in controlling the inversion point of an emulsion system. The model proposed in this paper can help predict inversion point of an emulsion system. Estimation of inversion point of emulsions helps improve the existing emulsion viscosity correlations and develop new models when necessary. The improved heavy oil-water emulsion viscosity models can be used in design and operation phases of heavy oil fields.