Oil Treater Sizing

Basics
 Why Treat Oil
• Typical Pipeline
Specification>>>>>> • Maximum Sediment and Water – 1%
by Volume
• Reduce Vapor • Maximum Reid Vapor Pressure – 8
for API Gravities <34.9
Pressure • Max delivery T- 120°F
• Min delivery T – 40°F
• Remove Water • Max other impurities such as Sulphur
– Reduce Corrosion
– Reduce Salt(s)
– Decrease “wasted”
volume
 Emulsions
• Mixture consisting of tiny droplets of water dispersed
throughout through out the other
• Droplets are the discontinuous phase
• Factors affecting the “stability” of an emulsion
– Density Difference between the two phases
– Size of Dispersed Droplets
– Viscosity
– Interfacial Tension
– Presence of emulsifying agent(s)
• Small particles (corrosion)
• Paraffins
• Asphaltenes
• other
 Oil Treating
• Oil Treating Equipment
– Tanks – Gravity Separation / Weathering
– Vertical Treaters
– Gun Barrels
– Horizontal Treater
– Electrostatic Treater
– Desalters
 Oil Treater
Typical Horizontal Treater
 Oil Treater
Typical Horizontal Electrostatic Treater
 Sizing and Theory
• Treater Sizing is more an art than a science with
many designs based on what has worked in the
past – like Grandma’s cooking!
– Often have no good crude sample or produced water
sample
– Lab produced emulsions often not reflective of actual
– Emulsion affected not only by crude and Produced
water chemistry but also by added chemicals,
shearing / coalescing forces upstream of the treater,
corrosion products, etc.
– How to make an informed design decision based on
so many unknown variables
 Sizing & Theory Cont.
• Paper describes the development of a
design Parameter
– Based on available proprietary data of actual
working systems
– Based on the following equation
 Sizing & Theory Cont.
• Rearranging gives
– dmin = (438*Q * )/(d*Le* )

• Plotting and creating a function to match

data gives
Sizing & Theory Cont.
 Sizing & Theory Cont.
• Proprietary Data for treaters over a wide
range of water cuts was used to back
calculate the an inputted droplet size as a
function of water cut.
Sizing & Theory Cont.
 Sizing & Theory Cont.
• Once the minimum droplet size has been
determined a the original sizing equation

• Can be rearranged as such (BOPD / Sq.

Ft.)