Recent demulsification methods of crude oil emulsions – Brief review

The oil industry faces with crude oil emulsions formation issue. It is a common problem for the most of oil-producing countries around the world, including the Republic of Kazakhstan. Mainly, water-in-oil type of emulsions (or reverse emulsions) are formed during oil extraction and transportation. The presence of water in crude oil causes an increase in the cost of oil processing and transportation and consequently increases the cost of oil refinery products. It also induces corrosion of equipment when oil is extracted and transported. In this paper, several major methods of demulsification based on chemical, membrane, electric, magnetic, microwave separation used for the breaking of water-in-oil emulsions in recent years are reviewed and their advantages and disadvantages are highlighted. It is shown that it is important to create cost-efficient and smart demulsifiers of stable oil emulsions including their ecological friendly characteristics. Therefore, the future perspective research areas include the development of sustainable and alternative demulsification methods which are in demands today. In addition, the development of the effective combination of destabilization methods is still relevant today to achieve the synergetic effect in dewatering of highly stable oil emulsions.