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An Overview of Viscosity Reducers in Heavy Crude Oil Production

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Paper No. 838 CHEMECA 2014: Sept 28 – Oct 01 2014, Perth, Western Australia

An Overview of Viscosity Reducers in Heavy Crude Oil

Production
Hazlina Husin1,2, Azlinda Azizi1 and Afuza Husna1
1
Faculty of Chemical Engineering
Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam 40450 Malaysia
2
CoRe of Frontier Materials & Industry Applications,
Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam 40450 Malaysia

hazlina858@salam.uitm.edu.my

Abstract

Production of heavy crude oil is unfavourable because of the high viscosity property of the crude.
When viscosity is high, it causes an increase of pump energy as it creates high pressure drop in the
pipelines. In the near future, heavy crude oil production may become favourable especially when
low viscosity crudes will be depleted. Many approaches have been employed for reducing the
viscosity of heavy crudes including heating, blending with diluents and forming oil-in-water
emulsions. Heating had a dramatic effect on the heavy crude viscosity, but it failed to achieve a
practical level; consequently, blending the heavy crude with either light crude or kerosene or diesel
was attempted and further reduction was achieved, but substantial amounts of these expensive
diluents are required and some diluents are toxic to environment. This article reviews three methods
of viscosity reducer in heavy crude oil production, namely the use of drag reducing agent, chemical
additive and emulsification.

Keywords: Emulsion, Additive, Drag reducing agent, Bitumen, Viscosity reducer.

Introduction
Crude oil is the most active traded commodities in the world. Over the past 20 years, worldwide
demand for crude has grown from 60 to 84 million barrels per day. Three categories of crude oil are
the conventional crude oil, heavy crude oil and tar sand bitumen. The International Energy Agency
(IEA) stimulated that heavy oil represents at least 50% of the recoverable oil resources of the world
(reported by IEA, 2006). American Petroleum Institute gravity unit (oAPI) is used in crude oil
production application, as shown in figure 1, to reflect the viscosity of crude oil. Due to the limited
amount of available crude oil, heavy crude oil which were not reasonable to be recovered so far, is
really needed. This include the crude oil having <15 oAPI.

Heavy crude oil is not economical to be processed. The highly viscous fluids with complex
composition will give impact to the transportation and refining processes (Al-Besharah et al., 1987;
Martínez-Palou et al., 2011). There have been substantial studies to overcome problems
encountered in pipeline transportation of crude oil. Some techniques of viscosity depression
reported in literatures are dilution with diluent (Gateau et al., 2004; Hasan et al., 2010; Yaghi and Al-
Bemani, 2002), lubricating, heating (Hasan et al., 2010; Yaghi and Al-Bemani, 2002) and upgrading
composition (Rana et al., 2007). This overview presents three viscosity depression techniques; the
use of drag reducing agent (DRA), chemical additives and emulsification. These techniques render a
rheological behaviour to justify the viscosity depression efficiency.
Paper No. 838 CHEMECA 2014: Sept 28 – Oct 01 2014, Perth, Western Australia

Viscosity (cP)
10 100 1,000 10,000 100,000 1,000,000

35 20 15 10
o
Gravity ( API)

Figure 1. Classification of crude oils by °API gravity and viscosity. Adapted from (Aske et al., 2002)

Drag Reducing Agent (DRA)

Drag reduction is a phenomenon in which friction of fluid flowing in a pipe in turbulent regime is
decreased by adding a small amount of substance. It is an important study in fluid transport
applications (Beaty et al., 1984; Motier and Prilutski, 1984). In the presence of DRA, it reduced the
turbulent friction of fluid leading to a decrease in pressure drop (Li et al., 2008). In a similar case,
highly viscous heavy crude oil flowing in a pipe creates a high pressure drop. The high pressure drop
can be decreased by using DRA such as polymer and surfactant.

Polymer
Polymer is reported as the most effective and the most widely used DRA in industrial applications
(Gyr and Bewersdorff, 1995). Sabadini and Alkschbirs have investigated a drag reduction ability in
aqueous polyethylene oxide (PEO) based on drop impact images (Sabadini and Alkschbirs, 2004).
PEO is known as a flexible polymer and reported as the most effective DRA in aqueous systems
(Bailey and Koleske, 1976). A high molecular weight polymer which present in a small quantity (in
ppm) in solution can produce a high level of drag reduction of a turbulent flow (Toms, 1948). This
was also supported by Virk et al. which described that a very dilute high molecular weight polymeric
solution in a turbulent flow requires a lower pipe flow-pressure gradient than a pure solvent to
produce the same flow rate (Virk et al., 1967). They also suggested the drag reduction was due to
the high elongational viscosity of the polymer solutions.

Further studies found that smaller pipe size has an effect on the polymer DRA efficiency. When Al-
Sarkhi investigated the influence of a co-polymer of polyacrylamide-sodium acrylate on air–water
flow, he found that the drag reduction in a small pipe (2.54 cm inner dia.) was up to 63% but only
48% in a big pipe (9.53 cm inner dia.). Similar observation was reported by Al-Wahaibi et al. when
they investigated the same type of polymer on oil flow (Al-Wahaibi et al., 2007). They reported that
the polymer caused a decrease in pressure gradient and a drag reduction of about 50%. They also
concluded that the addition of the polymer results in a decrease in both the interfacial and the water
wall shear stresses, via a two-fluid flow model. Al-Sarkhi and his group had put on continuous effort
on investigating the effect of polymer on flow (single and multiphase) (Al-Sarkhi, 2010, 2012; Al-
Sarkhi et al., 2011; Al-Yaari et al.; Al-Yaari et al., 2009).

The most abundant renewable and biodegradable polymer is cellulose (Varshney and Naithani,
2011). The unique properties of cellulose ethers such as combined effect of flow control,
stabilization, water retention and film formation are not generally obtainable by synthetic polymers.
Rheological studies of cellulose ethers, for example carboxymethycellulose (CMC), showed that
cellulose ethers have non-Newtonian pseudo-plastic behaviour. Kaur and Japper-Jaafar proposed a
Paper No. 838 CHEMECA 2014: Sept 28 – Oct 01 2014, Perth, Western Australia

method for producing CMC from banana peels to act as DRA (Kaur and Japper-Jaafar, 2013). The
drag reduction percentage (%DR) is calculated as:

where T is the torque (Nm) and the subscripts t and u refer to the treated fluid (with DRA) and
untreated fluid (without DRA). The proposed method is less time consuming and more practical.
When the carboxymethylation reaction was optimized against the reaction temperature, results
showed that the presence of natural polymer in oil at 50oC resulted in a decrease of the drag
reduction percentage; conforming similar study which was reported earlier by Varshney et al.
(Varshney et al., 2006).

Surfactant
Surfactants which act as powerful drag reducers in turbulent flow in pipes are non-ionic, anionic,
cationic and zwitterionic. Their ability as drag reducers at low concentration are ascribed to their
rod-like micelle-shapes. The micelles are functioning in the mechanism of turbulence suppression
and in the viscosity depression which can be even higher than in some polymer solutions. The
unique property of surfactant which impacts their performance is their ability to self-repair. Self-
repair ability is an ability of a group of molecules to return to its original form after their structure
has been altered as a result of high shear. This characteristic makes a surfactant a good candidate
for recirculation (Prajapati, 2009; Zakin et al., 1998) and emulsion (Đorđević et al., 2013; Pons et al.,
1995; Xiao and Jiang, 2013) systems.

Myska et al. compared the properties of two different types of surfactant, (i) cationic and (ii)
zwitterionic (Myska and Chara, 2001). The cationic surfactant is cetyl trimethyl ammonium chloride
while the zwitterionic surfactant is (SPE 98330). When used at the same composition, both types of
surfactant showed the same drag reducing efficiency. These results are supported by Harwigsson
and Hellsten (Harwigsson and Hellsten, 1996) and Hellsten et al. (Hellsten et al., 1996). When
compared between the same type of surfactant, such as between ionic cetyl trimethyl ammonium
chloride and ionic cetyl trimethyl ammonium bromide, study found that they showed the same drag
reducing efficiency. However, only ionic cetyl trimethyl ammonium chloride is micelle-shapes
whereas ionic cetyl trimethyl ammonium bromide is spherical-shape with radii of 3 to 5 nm (Candau
et al., 1988). Furthermore, ionic cetyl trimethyl ammonium bromide was able to decrease friction
losses by ~90% and was much larger than that predicted by the Virk maximum drag reduction
asymptote theory (Virk et al., 1970).

Chemical Additive
Several studies have utilised chemical additive as a viscosity reducer in crude oil application (Kuzmic
et al., 2008; Soni et al., 2010). Reducing viscosity of crude oil leads to a process of enhancing the
heavy crude oil recovery. This was due to either a reaction mechanism involved by the added
chemical additive (Castro et al., 2011) or inhibition of bitumen precipitation (Joonaki et al., 2012).
Examples of chemical additive are polymer, ionic, water-based, oil-based and nanoparticles. Castro
et al. investigated a polymer-type additive by using Mexican crude oils (Castro et al., 2011). They
reported that both the crude oils, with and without the presence of terpolymer, exhibited non-
Newtonian behaviour. Terpolymer (as in figure 2) consists of 3 co-monomers; styrene (S), n-
butylacrylate (BuA) and vinyl acetate (VA). They found that the viscosity of the crude oil was reduced
when the terpolymer have a high percentage of S, or low percentage of BuA or VA. Meanwhile,
Joonaki et al. developed an ionic additive named IRAN91 (Joonaki et al., 2012). The effectiveness of
Paper No. 838 CHEMECA 2014: Sept 28 – Oct 01 2014, Perth, Western Australia

ionic additive IRAN91 in order to reduce the viscosity of heavy oil is investigated by using the
samples from Marun oil field, Bangestan reservoir. They found that the presence of ionic additive
IRAN91 resulted in a reduction of heavy oil viscosity up to 64%. The effect of oil-based and water-
based chemical additives was investigated by Xie et al. (Xie et al., 2001). They found that oil-based
additive is a good viscosity reducer for viscous crude oil with low or medium viscosity. On the other
hand, water-based additive is a very good viscosity reducer for viscous crude oil with high viscosity.

Figure 2. Structural representation of S-BuA-VA terpolymer. Adapted from (Castro et al., 2011)

Over the past few years, several nanoparticles have been investigated for viscosity reduction of
heavy crude oil. A comprehensive review is performed by Bjørnseth in his thesis entitled Heavy Oil
Production Technology Challenges and the Effect of Nano Sized Metals on the Viscosity of Heavy Oil
which covers a set of lab experiments, where the impact of nano-sized metal particles on heavy
crude oil is studied (Bjørnseth, 2013). He also studied the application of these nano-sized metal
particles in topside facilities at the wellsite, as a significant viscosity depressor reduces the need for
pumps and flow assurance installations (Bjørnseth, 2013). Chen et al. investigated a Keggin-
structured additive used in a catalytic aqua-thermolysis of extra-heavy oil called nano-keggin-
K3PMO12O40 (Chen et al., 2009). In the study, the efficiency of viscosity reduction was evaluated and
was found that nano-K3PMo12O40 has good catalytic efficiency for the aqua-thermolysis of extra-
heavy oil. The viscosity of the extra-heavy oil was reduced by 92.3% at 280oC. Another recent study
has been presented by Greff and Babadagli (Greff and Babadagli, 2012). The experiments were
conducted in the presence of nano-sized nickel catalyst. The nano-sized nickel catalyst increased the
efficiency of microwave heating for heavy oil production. Through the observations presented in the
study, the results showed that when heavy oil is exposed to microwaves in the presence of nano-
metal catalysts, significant portions of the heavy oil are cracked and vaporized out of the system.

Emulsification
Emulsions are colloidal systems in which fine droplets of one liquid are dispersed in another liquid
where the two liquids otherwise being mutually immiscible (Abdel-Raouf, 2012), with droplet size
usually in the micro-meter range (2012). Characterised by the nature of the droplet liquid, water-in-
oil emulsion (W/O) will comprise of water droplets in continuous oil phase, while oil-in-water (O/W)
emulsion will comprise of oil droplets in continuous water phase. By using surfactants and
detergents to form an O/W emulsion, crude oil can be suspended as microdroplets stabilized in an
aqueous continuous phase thus achieving a reduction in the apparent viscosity (Langevin et al.,
2004; Sullivan and Kilpatrick, 2002). Crude oil emulsions behave as pseudoplastic or shear-thinning,
meaning that the viscosity reduces as the shear rate increases.

Substantial literatures have reported on rheological characterization of emulsions (Dan and Jing,
2006; Farah et al., 2005). Based on recent study conducted by Hoshyargar and Ashrafizadeh, it was
found that rheology of crude oil emulsions is affected by temperature, Na2CO3 concentration (as
Paper No. 838 CHEMECA 2014: Sept 28 – Oct 01 2014, Perth, Western Australia

actuator of asphaltene), NaCl concentration (as salinity of continuous phase), oil volume fraction (ɸ)
and number of revolution for homogenizer (Hoshyargar and Ashrafizadeh, 2013). The emulsification
method resulted in a reduction of crude oil viscosity by 90-99%. By referring to prediction of the
Herschel-Bulkley model in all cases, the optimum conditions of flow were reported as T = 25 oC,
Na2CO3 concentration = 2,000 ppm, NaCl concentration = 5,000 ppm, ɸ = 0.7 and revolution = 22500.
A review on different crude oil emulsion properties and transport of high viscosity hydrocarbon as a
crude oil in water emulsion was conducted by Langevin et al. (Langevin et al., 2004). They concluded
that emulsion behaviour is largely controlled by the properties of the adsorbed layers that stabilize
the crude oil-water surface.

Frequently, emulsions with small size of the dispersed droplets and a narrow particle size
distribution are known to have high viscosities and larg residence time (Kokal, 2005). Indeed,
bitumen (highly viscous crude oil) droplets in water have the same effect like other types of
emulsion (Nunez et al., 2000). This is because the viscosities of bitumen and water are very far apart.
At room temperature, the viscosity of bitumen and water is 7000 Pa.s and 0.001 Pa.s, respectively.
So, by assuming the bitumen droplet in an aqueous solution is solid particles and non-slip boundary
condition on droplet surfaces is present (Wu et al., 1999), bitumen droplet in water can also be
treated as O/W emulsion. Nunez et al. have continuously investigated the effect of bitumen
emulsion viscosity. They revealed that if the bitumen droplets are available in 2 different sizes, the
viscosity of the fluid will be reduced by a few orders (Nunez et al., 1996; Nunez et al., 2000). Their
findings are supported by others, also suggesting that dispersing bitumen in water is an efficient way
to reduce viscosity of fluid (Hoshyargar and Ashrafizadeh, 2013; Langevin et al., 2004). Similar to
crude oil emulsion, bitumen emulsion behaves as shear thinning non-Newtonian. The influence of
shear rate on the viscosity is observed to increase as the concentration of the dispersed phase
increases.

Conclusion
From this overview, efficiencies of the three types of viscosity reducers used in heavy crude oil
production can be generalised. The practical applications of DRA, chemical additives and
emulsification in the petroleum industry are appreciable. The fact that emulsification technology
does not incur high costs alongside its highly safe to the environment makes this technology a
proper candidate for further consideration and studies.

Acknowledgment
We wish to acknowledge Universiti Teknologi MARA for the financial support (Grant No. 600-
RMI/ERGS 5/3 (30/2013)). We wish to thank the referees for their contribution in making this a
better paper and the Kemaman Bitumen Company Sdn. Bhd., Malaysia for bitumen supply.

Biography

Hazlina Husin
Paper No. 838 CHEMECA 2014: Sept 28 – Oct 01 2014, Perth, Western Australia

Hazlina is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Oil and Gas Engineering at The Universiti Teknologi
MARA, Malaysia. She just received her PhD degree from The University of Western Australia in 2013.
She is the leader of the Fluid Transport Technologies Group. She has fundamental interests in
multiphase flow and recently developed an integrated upstream production system for a long-term
research direction which has resulted in a patent application.

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