Experimental Study of Condensate Vaporization into Bubbles under Different Operating Parameters

Abstract

Produced water (PW) is a natural by-product of the oil and gas production process, where crude oil is dispersed in the form of micron-sized emulsified droplets in the produced water due to mixing between crude oil and water caused by equipment, piping and valve shear action. Flotation is the main method for treating emulsified oil droplets in oilfield produced water. The conventional flotation technology suffers from a series of problems such as large reflux ratio and poor flotation effect, thus limiting its further application. In this paper, bubbles are prepared by vaporization of low boiling point condensate through theoretical analysis and experimental study. In this paper, the law of bubble generation from condensate solution at different temperatures after decompression and release is investigated. The results demonstrate that the median particle size of gas bubbles generated from condensate is related to the condensate content, mixing pressure, release pressure, and temperature. The median particle size can reach 9.65 μm when mixed at 2.0% condensate content, 0.2 MPa mixing pressure, and 35°C, and released at atmospheric pressure, which is much smaller than the size of gas bubbles generated by dissolved air flotation. The condensate bubbles as alkane congeners are more likely to adhere to the oil droplets in the extracted water, which is conducive to improving the air flotation oil removal efficiency of oily wastewater.