Breaking of Water-in-Crude Oil Emulsions. 6. Estimating the Demulsifier Performance at Optimum Formulation from Both the Required Dose and the Attained Instability

Hydrophilic surfactant molecules with the proper formulation are able to break W/O emulsions stabilized by asphaltenes and other lipophilic amphiphiles as found in the effluent of petroleum wells. The demulsifier performance is here tested according to two critera. The first one, as in previous research, is the minimum dose of demulsifier used to attain the minimum stability at the so-called optimum formulation in a simplified bottle test. The second criterion is the value of this minimum stability at optimum formulation that has a direct relation with the separation time. Our findings show that, in a family of ethoxylated surfactants, the best demulsifier is a hydrophilic one, though not too much. When the demulsifier is a mixture of two surfactants, it usually exhibits an intermediate behavior between the components. However, the mixture sometimes appears to be better than any of the components alone with some synergistic effect that improves the performance.