Theoretical Survey and Experimental Assessment on the Comercial Surfactants to Produce Stable Water-in-Petroleum of Miri Light and Kuwait Heavy Crude Oil Emulsions

In this research the formulation of the experimental w/o emulsions was investigated based on two diferent crude oils, the crude oils used in this study were Miri light oil from malaysia and Kuwait heavy oil from middle east, the study was conducted with particular emphasis on the qualiy as well as quntity of the emulsifying agents,on purpose of selecting a suitable emulsifying agent to produce stable water-in-oil emulsions of the aforementioned oils, three types of emulsifying agents were tested namely Triton x-100, SDDS and SPAN 80, at various concentrations of 1, 3 and 5%, the water to oil ratios in the emulsion samples were 50-50% and 20-80%, from the results of this study SPAN 80 had produced very stable emulsions which showed no water separation within the observation period of one week for 50-50 as well as 20-80% w/o emulsions, while the other emulsifiers (Triton x- 100 and SDDS) were found to be not effective, thus for emulsions with respect to the minimum emulsifiers’ concentration of 1% and 50-50%, water to oil ratios, the separation rate of the Triton x-100 stabilised emulsions withinthe first 24 hours was, 70% for Miri oil emulsion and 50% for Kuwait oil emulsions, while the separation rate for SDDS stabilised with the same formulation was 60% for Miri emulsion and 55% fror Kuwait emulsions, but no water separation was observed with the SPAN 80 stabilised emulsions of the same compositions.When the water content was decreased to 20%, there was some increase in the stability, hence again with the minimum emulsifiers’ concentration of 1%, and 20-80% water-in-oil emulsions, the amount of water separated from the Triton x-100 stabilised emulsions were 38 % for Miri emulsions, 0.4% for Kuwait emulsions, while the percent amount of water separated from SDDS stblised emulsions were, 38% for Miri emulsion and 1% for Kuwait emulsion, but again there was no water separation for SPAN 80 stabilised emulsions of same formulation. Based on theses observations SPAN 80 was found to be the most effective emulsifiers to produce experimental emulsions from Miri light and Kuwait heavy crude oils.