OPTIMIZING CLAY MINERALS APPLICATION AS CRUDE OIL DEMULSIFIER

By : Mahajana H.1, Ksatria Y. P.1, dan Erfandi A.2

1.

Student of Bachelor Degree from Geological Engineering Departement, Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Gadjah Mada Yogyakarta, Indonesia 55281
2.

Student of Bachelor Degree from Geophysics, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences Universitas Gadjah Mada Yogyakarta, Indonesia 55281

e-mail : erfandi.adhiansyah@yahoo.com

Abstract
Emulsion is a colloidal system with a dispersion phase that can be either liquid, solid or gas. At a petroleum reservoir, emulsion may happen in a dispersed phase of liquid, which is between oil itself with formation water contained in the reservoir near the Oil-Water Contact (OWC). Emulsion formation problems in the reservoir or in other various phases of activity in oil and gas industry, such as storage, until the refinery process are often being solved by a substances which called demulsifier. Several chemicals commonly used to break oil emulsions which this is TOMAC, hexilamine, dioctilamine, methyl methacrylate, butyl acrylate and ASID- acrylic. Other alternative demulsifier has also been used to break an emulsion of crude oil. One of the alternative methods was by using clay minerals such as smectite as a demulsifier. The usage of clay minerals as a demulsifier wasnt as popular as any other chemical based demulsifier. Using clay minerals as a demulsifier was not as easy to apply and not effective for large scale production (compared to other demulsifier). Clay minerals usage as a demulsifier was still hard to be applied because there is no propper methods has been discovered yet to process the crude oil emulsion by using clay minerals and also that the clay itself is only effective to be used for water in oil emulsion. As a demulsifier, clay minerals have excess of row material that can be easily found, cheap in price, less corrosive to metal equipment, and low environmental risk. Generally, we can get a lots of positive advantages from using clay minerals as a demulsifier. To make clay minerals as a more reliable demulsifier, some development needs to be done, one of it is to optimize the effectiveness of the clay minerals itself as a demulsifier. By using a simple recycle methods, the efficiency of clay minerals usage could be increased, the cost to bring in the raw material could be minimize and in the end, it could also minimize the waste of the demulsification process. After the optimization of clay minerals usage, the only task left to make this innovative and environmental friendly crude oil solution to be more reliable is by finding the proper way to demulsificate by using clay minerals. After that, clay minerals could really be a great alternative demulsifier in the petroleum industries, and the usage of chemical material can be minimized.