Design of viscosity reduction system for heavy oil based on ultrasonic

Abstract

At present, the pipeline transportation of heavy oil mainly adopts heating transportation technology, which consumes a lot of energy and may cause condensation accidents. Therefore, the research and application of pipeline heavy oil cold transportation technology is very necessary. High-power ultrasound can reduce the viscosity of heavy oil to increase its fluidity. This technology has the advantages of low cost and no harm to the environment, and has a good development prospect in the application of heavy oil cold transportation. This paper studies the ultrasonic viscosity reduction technology for heavy oil, and designs the ultrasonic viscosity reduction system based on the analysis of the ultrasonic viscosity reduction mechanism, including the parameters, materials, structure design of the ultrasonic transducer and the circuit design of the ultrasonic generator. The ultrasonic viscosity reduction system was tested on the indoor test platform, and the viscosity reduction effect and influencing factors of the system were analyzed through the test. The experimental results show that the viscosity reduction rate of heavy oil samples can reach more than 40% irreversibly after the system is applied to the heavy oil samples for 20 minutes at room temperature, and the same viscosity reduction effect can be achieved only by using water bath heating method, which requires the water temperature to be above 60°C. Therefore, ultrasonic viscosity reduction system has more advantages than the traditional heating viscosity reduction method, which provides a valuable reference for the application of ultrasonic viscosity reduction technology.