Heavy oils are becoming increasingly attractive from the standpoint of availability of reserves and economic status as "opportunity" feedstocks. However, they also bring some complex dehydration problems including high levels of suspended solids, conductive organic species, and varying amounts of semisoluble and precipitated organic materials. Meeting these challenges requires new techniques in both the areas of chemical treatment and dehydrator design. This paper focuses upon improvements in hardware design.

Keywords:
heavy oil, dehydrator, gradient, field gradient, dehydration system, critical voltage gradient, upstream oil & gas, modulation, controller, composite electrode
Subjects:
Processing Systems and Design, Dehydration
Copyright 2002, SPE/PS-CIM/CHOA International Thermal Operations and Heavy Oil Symposium and International Horizontal Well Technology Conference
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