Commercial Emulsion Breaking

This chapter's purpose is to share the qualitative perspective of emulsion breaking held by the petroleum industry at the production or refining operations level. Incorporation of site-specific data is avoided in favor of broader conceptual information to emphasize that each commercial facility must be viewed as unique when developing emulsion-breaking goals and methods. Theories of emulsions and demulsification, variability of applied chemicals, and limitations of present demulsifier selection techniques are presented. This chapter reinforces the belief that a qualitative view of emulsion breaking is essential at this time for the petroleum industry, unless the number of variables is reduced, typically by studying each commercial facility or crude oil as a unique case. If such study is economically feasible, valid models for predicting emulsion-breaking performance may be developed and applied on a wider scale.