Experimental Investigation of Viscosity Reduction for Transportation of Heavy and Extra-Heavy Crude Oils Using Transmission Pipelines

Due to the increase in the world energy demand, it is required to use all hydrocarbon resources especially heavy and extra heavy crude oils. But transportation of these oils is very difficult due to their high viscosity and low mobility. There are many different methods to reduce heavy crude oils viscosity like heating, blending, water in oil emulsion formation, upgrading and core annular flow. The aim of this research is to investigate experimentally some of these methods for reduction of viscosity of two Iranian heavy crude oils. Naphtha, light crude and kerosene were used to be blended with the oils. Results showed that heating decreases the viscosity very rapidly and naphtha is the best blend type that can decrease the viscosity of Soroosh and Nowrooz crude oils to 200 cp ,which is the appropriate viscosity for pipeline transportation, by using 15 and 5% vol. of naphtha, respectively. Alternatively, emulsion formation was carried out using Triton X-100 as the emulsifying agent, and it was established that a practical level of reduction is achievable at 75–85% vol. oil content.

Keywords:

Viscosity Reduction , Heavy crude oil , pipeline transportation , Blending , Water in oil emulsion