Magnetoelectrodehydrator

Abstract

One of the problems of the oil industry is the significant amount of water in the oil-containing fluid being extracted from wells. For some fields, the indicator of water content reaches 75–77%. The content of salts, water, and mechanical impurities in the oil, has a negative impact on the operation of the equipment of oil refineries. In the paper we propose an original design of dehydrator, containing systems of oppositely charged electrodes located between magnetization coils of alternating electric current. In the design the separation of the oil-water emulsion additionally occurs due to the crossed forces of the electric and magnetic fields. For the dehydrator design under consideration mathematical modeling was performed with aim of investigation and simulation of water droplets movement under the action of the electric and magnetic fields existing inside the dehydrator. As the result of the numerical simulation of the dehydration process in the design under consideration shows, applying of crossed electric and magnetic fields leads to a significant increase in the probability of collisions of water droplets, accelerates their growth and sedimentation velocity by gravity, that allows to raise the dehydrator productivity in the comparison with the cases of using only an electric or only magnetic field. Given design of dehydrator can be used in the gas and oil industry.