Crude oil emulsion properties and their application to heavy oil transportation

Many advances have been made in the field of emulsions in recent years. Emulsion behavior is largely controlled by the properties of the adsorbed layers that stabilize the oil-water surfaces. The knowledge of surface tension alone is not sufficient to understand emulsion properties, and surface rheology plays an important role in a variety of dynamic processes. The complexity of petroleum emulsions comes from the oil composition in terms of surface-active molecules contained in the crude, such as low molecular weight fatty acids, naphthenic acids and asphaltenes. These molecules can interact and reorganize at oil/water interfaces. The pronounced nonlinear behavior of surface rheology for asphaltene layers might explain differences in behavior between surfactant and asphaltene emulsions. These effects are very important in the case of heavy oils because this type of crude contains a large amount of asphaltene and surface-active compounds. This article reviews different petroleum emulsion properties and the transport of high viscosity hydrocarbon as a crude oil in water emulsion.