Rheological Behavior of Crude Oil Emulsions of an Iranian Oil Field

Several emulsions were synthesized using a crude oil sample named Nowruz as the oil phase، the deionized water as the water phase and Span 40-type surfactant as the emulsifier and parameters affecting the rheological properties of emulsions were studied. In order to investigate the quality of emulsions، their stability was monitored in a three month period. A power-law model was used for the dependence of emulsion viscosity on shear rate and Liu، Richardson، Mooney، and Krieger-Dougherty models were used for the dispersed phase volume fraction dependency. It was observed that the data obtained from modeling were consistent with the experimental data. The results obtained by microscopic analysis revealed that the phase inversion phenomenon took place in the range of 40 to 50% of the dispersed phase (water) content. Temperature was found to be a significantly effective factor in all the samples including the crude oil and its emulsions. It was observed that an increase in temperature could cause a considerable decrease in viscosity، shear stress، and dynamic moduli. An increase in water volume fraction caused an increase in viscosity and dynamic moduli up to the phase inversion point and resulted in a reverse trend beyond this point. The investigation of shear rate effect demonstrated a Newtonian behavior for the crude oil and shear-thinning effect for the emulsions over a wide range of shear rates. The shear-thinning effect increased with an increase in water content and surfactant concentration. The results showed a decrease in loss tangent and a notable increase in viscosity، shear stress، dynamic moduli، and elasticity of emulsions with an increase in surfactant concentration.