Sharif Digital Repository

Separating produced water is a key part of production processing for most crude oils. It is required for quality reasons, and to avoid unnecessary transportation costs and prevent pipework corrosion rates caused by soluble salts present in the water. A complicating factor is that water is often present in crude oil in the form of emulsions. Experiments were performed to evaluate the performance of ultrasonic fields in demulsifying crude oil emulsions using novel pipe-form equipment. A horn-type piezoelectric ultrasonic transducer with a frequency of 20 kHz and power ranging from 80 W to 1000 W was used for experimental purposes. The influences of the intensity of ultrasonic fields,...