There is an increasing need to limit the use of chemical treating agents during oil and gas production and to search for safer and cost effective ones mainly due to environmental constraints. Therefore the use and performance of demulsifiers have to be improved from the application and cost as well as from the environmental issues. This means that new formulations must be less toxic and efficient compared to the general classical chemical families of demulsifiers which contain toxic molecules like phenol groups.

This paper is on the performance and the comparison of four chemical demulsifiers (local and foreign) on their demulsification of four crude oil emulsions of different asphaltene contents from different oil wells in the Niger Delta. The chemical families of these demulsifiers were screened with effective separation ability of different surfactants using classical "Bottle test". The Bottle test helped to determine the type of demulsifier that will most effectively break the emulsion of the crude samples. The basic aim of this screening was to compare and rank the efficiency of the various demulsifiers both local and foreign (V4404 of Nigeria, 92LTM174 of USA, EN/82/2 of France and DS 964 of Canada) in terms of percentage (%) volume of water that will be separated out of the samples. The results showed that the viscosity of the emulsions increased as the water content increased with an assumption that only oil and water were present. The nature of the emulsions were subject to changes, therefore no treatment method was conclusively generalized as best for every emulsion problem. Finally from the preliminary screening, the result also revealed that V4404 a local demulsifier exhibited very interesting performance and was also environmentally friendly compared to the imported ones.

You can access this article if you purchase or spend a download.