APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR SEPARATING AN OIL-WATER EMULSION

Abstract: An oil and water emulsion treating apparatus is dis­ closed which comprises a vessel (18) having an emulsion inlet (20) adjacent to the top of said vessel, a water outlet (32) at the bottom of said vessel and a treated oil outlet (36) at the top of said vessel. The apparatus also comprises a heater having a combustion chamber (40) external to said vessel and an array of heat pipes (38) contained in part within said combustion chamber (40) and extending into the said vessel (18) and into the emulsion to break the emulsion into free water and treated oil. The said heat pipes (38) are mutually parallel and form an acute angle with the horizontal as a plane of reference.

Description: APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR SEPARATING AN OIL-WATER EMULSION The invention relates to an apparatus and a method for separating an oil-water emulsion. It is primarily intended to be used to receive and separate the emulsion emerging from an oil well into free gas, free water, and oil. It can also be used in other applications requiring this separation function. Many prior art systems for separating an oil-water emulsion are known and most of them depend upon the application of heat to the emulsion to hasten the separation of the oil from the water. However, prior art systems depend upon a fire tube, usually in the shape of U, extending directly into the vessel containing the emulsion. This arrangement presents serious problems of local and excessive heating of that volume of emulsion in the immediate vicinity of the surface of the fire tube; temperature rise expansion stresses, undesirable evaporation of those components of petroleum in the emulsion having a low boiling point; excessive scaling of the surfaces of the fire tube; and the very real danger of fire in the vessel when the fire tube fails, and high temperature flames impact directly into the emulsion. The applicant is aware of the following prior art: US-A 2,286,654 US-A-3,945,433 US-A-2,732,070 US-A-4,067,315 US-A-2,779,143 US-A-4,224,925 US-A-2,868,313 US-A-4,226,282 US-A-3,229,759 US-A-4,329,159 US-A-3,581,471 US-A-4,394,344 US-A-3,815,552 FR-A-1,210,907 A bibliography entitled "Heat Pipe Technology" dated September 30, 1981 published by the Technology Application Center. The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131. None of the above cited references appears to teach or even suggest the invention as claimed. US-A-2,868,313 does disclose a system and a structure for the separation of an oil-water emulsion, but the inventors thereof use the well known and industry-standard fire tube extending directly into the vessel. The teaching thereof appears to be directed to the use of a series of baffles and plates to prevent turbulance in the emulsion. In accordance with the present invention there is provided an oil and water emulsion treating apparatus comprising: a) a vessel having an emulsion inlet adjacent to the top of said vessel, a water outlet at the bottom of said vessel and a treated oil outlet at the top of said vessel, and b) a heater having a combustion chamber external to said vessel and an array of heat pipes contained in part within said combustion chamber and extending into the said vessel and into the emulsion to break the emulsion into free water and treated oil, the said heat pipes being mutually parallel and forming an acute angle with the horizontal as a plane of reference. The invention further provides a heater adapted for use with an oil and water emulsion treater comprising: a) a housing having a combustion chamber positioned external to the treater, b) a gas burner in said housing to maintain a high temperature in said combustion chamber, and c) an array of heat pipes enclosed in part within said combustion chamber and extending beyond said housing and arranged to penetrate into the treater, the said heat pipes being mutually parallel one to another, each respective heat pipe axis forming an acute angle with a horizontal plane of reference. Additionally, the invention provides a method of separating an oil-water emulsion comprising the steps of: a) containing the emulsion in a vessel; b) generating heat for said emulsion by a heat combustion source external to said vessel; c) transferring the heat generated in said source into the said vessel by evaporating, condensing, and surfacetension pumping of a liquid; and d) exhausting the separated oil and water from the vessel. The invention is capable of hastening the separation of oil from water and improving the thermal efficiency accepted by the industry. In the accompanying drawings: Figure 1 is a perspective view, partly cut away, showing a typical heat pipe; Figure 2 is an elevation view, partly cut away, showing the prior art system; and Figure 3 is an elevation view, partly cut away, showing an emulsion treating apparatus according the invention. The present applicant has found that unexpected and unobvious advantages and results flow from the use of a heat pipe with a vessel containing an oil-water emulsion to hasten the separation of the fluids. For example, the expected industryefficiencyof about 30-37% has been raised to about 74%. This is in addition to the advantages of the elimination of thermalexpansion stresses inherent in the fire tube designaswell as the elimination of fire danger when the fuel combustion chamber is entirely external to the vessel. Experience with the prior art fire tube installations has shown that localized hot spots develop in the tube with resulting metal distortion and failure. The heat pipe array used herein results in a uniform temperature, with lack of local boiling of the emulsion. This uniformity results in less driving off of the fractions of the petroleum having a low boiling point. The heat pipe is a high performance heat transfer device which can transport heat at high rates and over long distances with a very small temperature gradient. The phenomena of evaporation, condensation, and surface-tension pumping of a liquid in a capillary wick are used to transfer latent heat of vaporization continuously from one region to another, without the aid of external work. Within a given temperature range, a heat pipe performs like a high conductance thermal conductor. This high conductance property is dependent on the thermophysical properties and processes of the internal working fluid. Thus the heat pipe can have a heat transfer rate thousands of times greater than the best solid heat conductors of the same dimensions. However, the heat pipe is normally not characterized by an effective thermal conductivity, because it is actually a convective heat transfer device which utilizes the convective processes of evaporation and condensation. The heat pipe is properly characterized by two convective heat transfer coefficients, one for the evaporation process and one for the condensation process. It is simple, relatively easy to manufacture, inexpensive, and operates silently and reliably for long lifetimes. The transfer of heat by evaporating and condensing a liquid is not new. For many years, turbine blades and piston engine valves have been cooled by the internal evaporation and condensation of a liquid metal working fluid. Evaporation and condensation devices called reflux condensers or thermosyphons which require gravity for liquid return, have also been used for many applications including cooling electronic systems. Steam generators for space heating and power generation (Rankine cycle systems) commonly use the evaporation and condensation heat transfer process. However, all of these devices require some external power to return the condensate back to the evaporator. External power from gravity, acceleration forces, or externally powered boiler feed pumps is required, whereas the heat pipe relies only on the self-contained sources of surface tension pumping in a capillary wick to return the condensate to the evaporator region. The modern form of the heat pipe was invented in 1963 by George M. Grover of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico. Dr. Grover and his colleagues conceived the name "heat pipe" for this device, which was originally developed for use in special spacecraft power generating systems where no gravity field was present. US-A-3,229,759 referred to above which primarily relates to a lithium liquid metal heat pipe invented by Dr. Grover. The first heat pipe built by Grover used a porous ceramic as the capillary wick, water as the working fluid, and was enclosed in a glass tube. Later work at Los Alamos concentrated on high temperature heat pipes with liquid metal fluids such as liquid sodium, potassium, and lithium. In April 1967 the first zero g test of a heat pipe was conducted by J.E.Deverall, et al. of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. This successful heat pipe experiment on an orbiting satellite demonstrated that heat pipes were useful for heat transfer on spacecraft. Subsequently, heat pipes have been used on a number of spacecraft. Generally, heat pipes are built from circular crosssection tubes. However, the shape of the heat pipe may be varied to fit the application flat plate, square tube, curved container, or flexible container. The structural elements of the heat pipe are: a closed outer container, a capillary wick and a working fluid exhibiting the desired thermal characteristics. Working fluid examples include water, alcohols, Freons, ammonia, low temperature cyrogenic liquids, and high temperature liquid metals. The wick is normally held uniformly against the inside wall of the container. Among the wick materials that have been used are woven cloth, fibreglass, porous metal, wire screen, and narrow grooves cut lengthwise or circumferentially in the pipe wall. In building an ordinary heat pipe, the pipe and wick are carefully cleaned and all non-condensing gases are evacuated from the container. Thus, only the vapour of the working fluid fills the central vapour space and liquid saturates the capillary wick. The region where heat is added to ;'le heat pipe is referred to as the evaporator and the region where heat is removed is called the condenser. The region between the evaporator and condenser is typically referred to as the adiabatic or transport section of the heat pipe. During the evaporation process in a heat pipe, heat may be absorbed from the saturated wick at high rates because the product of latent heat or vaporization and the mass flow rate of the liquid is large. The temperature at which the evaporation occurs depends primarily on the external heat input, the evaporator geometry, and the sink temperature. The pressure of the generated vapour is the saturated vapour pressure corresponding to the evaporation temperature. As the temperature of the evaporator is increased, the vapour pressure increases in this region causing a vapour pressure gradient between the evaporator region and the remaining vapour space in the heat pipe. This pressure gradient drives the heated vapour out of the evaporator with a substantial amount of heat energy in the form of latent energy. As the heated vapour contacts the cool walls in the unheated portion of the heat pipe, it condenses, giving up its latent heat of vaporization. At a given vapour pressure, the evaporation and condensation temperatures are very nearly equal. Thus, the condensing vapour flow heats the condenser region to a temperature nearly equal to that in the evaporator. The fact that heat must be transferred through the heat pipe wick for vaporization to occur at the liquidvapour interface, gives rise to a limit on the heat pipe capacity. Normally, liquid is vaporized only at the wick surface as a result of heat conducted throuah the wick. However, since the vapour at the wick surface is saturated vapour, the fluid within the wick at the evaporator is superheated. The greatest superheating occurs at the interface of the wick and the pipe wall. If the superheating becomes sufficiently large (it increases with the heat transfer rate), the fluid will begin to boil within the wick. For some wick-liquid combinations, such as water in a porous powder metal wick, the liquid will recede down into the wick and form a thin layer against the wall. Usually it is desirable to operate a heat pipe under conditions such that the superheating within the wick is below that of incipient boiling. The condenser of a heat pipe is that region (or regions) where heat is extracted. Thus, as a consequence, it must be coupled by either conduction, convection, or radiation to a sink at a temperature lower than that of the heat pipe. The heat transfer process at the condenser section is a much simpler phenomenon than at the evaporator. The vapour is condensed at the wick surface giving up its latent heat of vaporization which is conducted through the wick to the pipe wall. In the case of condensation, the conduction temperature drop results in subcooling of the liquid which is a stable situation. A limit on the condenser heat transfer due to condenser flooding exists but this is a hydrodynamic limit rather than a heat transfer limit. The condenser limit imposed by the kinetic ¯ rate of vapour exchange is sufficiently high so that it can be neglected except for some liquid metal heat pipes. The evaporation-condensation heat transfer process causes a depletion of liquid from the evaporator and an accumulation of liquid in the condenser, which must be equalized by the surface-tension pumping of the liquid in the capillary wick. In order for the capillary wick to function properly, it is necessary for the liquid to wet the surfaces of the wick structure. When proper wetting occurs, the liquid will readily be drawn into and saturate the wick by the liquid surface-tension forces. The surface tension forces exist along the free surface interface between the liquid in the saturated wick and the adjacent vapour space. As heating causes liquid to be depleted from the evaporator and the local vapour pressure to increase, the free surface interface becomes depressed into the surface pores of the evaporator wick. In the condenser, the accumulation of liquid and lower vapour pressure causes the free surface interface to become nearly flat. This difference in the shape of the free surface interface between the evaporator and the condenser is sustained by the difference or surface tension forces in the two regions. The result is a pressure gradient in the liquid which causes liquid to flow through the wick from the condenser to the evaporator. The capillary wick which connects the condenser to the evaporator should be of low resistance in order not to impede liquid flow unnecessarily. Also, the wick should have very small surface pores in the evaporator to provide a greater surface tension pumping force in the liquid. Thus, a steady flow of liquid in the wick and vapour in the vapour space permits heat to be transferred from the evaporator to the condenser continuously at high rates with a very small temperature drop. The performance of the heat pipe is limited by the ultimate pumping capacity of the wick. If the heat input rate exceeds the capability of the wick to supply liquid, the wick will begin to dry out and its temperature will rise rapidily. Gravity or acceleration forces can also affect. the performance of the heat pipe. If a pipe is subjected to a force which opposes the liquid flow in the wick, the liquid flow rate will decrease. This occurs because some of the surface tension pumping force must be diverted to overcome the opposing external force. As a result, the total heat transfer capacity of the heat pipe is reduced. Converselv, if a gravity or acceleration force is applied to aid the liquid flow in the wick, the heat transfer capacity will increase. When a heat pipe is operated in a horizontal position in a gravity-free, acceleration-free environment, the operation is unaffected by these outside forces. Referring now to the accompanying drawings, Figure 1 shows the structure of a typical heat pipe having an outer shell 10 which has a cloth or other porous material lining 12 and a wick 14 embedded therein. Fins 16 surrounding the heat input area of the shell are depended upon to increase the surface exposed to the heat source and the efficiency of the heat pipe. As discussed above, the evaporation of the working fluid takes place at one end of the housing and the condensation process, with resulting transfer of heat, takes place at the other end. Figure 2 illustrates the prior art structure used by industry to separate an oil-water emulsion into free gas, oil, and water. A vessel 18 is adapted to receive emulsion through an inlet pipe 20. The emulsion spreads over a perforated plate 22 and a substantial quantity flows through a drain pipe 24 to the general vicinity of a U-tube 26. The tube 26 is a fire tube and receives burning gas from a burner 28 and exhausts it through a stack 30. Note that the fire tube is in intimate contact with the emulsion and the danger of internal fire is high when the tube fails, as it does in industry practice. A flange 33 is bolted to the vessel 18 for ease of replacement when the fire tube fails. The natural tendency of the emulsion to separate is hastened by the application of heat, and free gas is driven off, together with some vapour formed by these fractions of the petroleum having a low boiling point through a gas discharge pipe 34. The water is drained off at a pipe 32 and the treated oil is discharged through a pipe 36 to storage tanks. Referring now to Figure 3, which shows an embodiment of the invention, and wherein the same reference characters are used to indentify like parts, vessel 18 has emulsion inlet pipe 20, perforated plate 22, drain pipe 24, water exhaust pipe 32, gas exhaust pipe 34, and treated oil exhaust pipe 36, as before. Heat is applied to the emulsion through an array of any number of heat pipes 38 having fins 16 at the heat input area and extending into the emulsion volume in vessel 18 at an angle from the horizontal of about 10 degrees to assist the return flow of the working fluid in each respective pipe. A combustion chamber 40 having an inlet 42 for fuel (usually gas) and an exhaust stack 44, is fastened to the vessel 18 substantially as shown. The inlet 2 supplies fuel to a burner located in the combustion chamber 40. The working fluid used is preferably toluol, an aromatic hydrocarbon having vapour pressure characteristics which are appropriate for this application and this temperature range. As an example, the combustion chamber temperature is about 10000F (5380C). The tube fintip temperature is about 5000F (260 C), the toluol temperature at the heat input area is about 3250F (1630C) and the gas-exhaust temper ature from the combustion chamber is about 250-3250F (122 1630C) The use of a heat pipe in a vessel separating an oil water emulsion produces unexpected and unobvious results far beyond the increased safety and elimination of the thermal expansion stresses. The efìcienev ofthe heat pipe system is a substantial improvement over the industry expected efficiency, using a fire tube, of about 30-37 percent. An efficiency test of the heat pipe system illustrated herein was conducted and the results are as follows: DATA: Total fluid production - 489 Barrels Oil production - 475 Barrels Water production - i4 Barrels Ending gas meter reading - 2773781 cu.ft. Beginning gas meter reading -2767316 cu.ft. Total gas consumption - 6465 cu.ft. Fluid density 40 API oil - 6.87 lbs/U.S.gal salt water - 8.56 lbs/U.S.gal 4 Fluid specific heat 40 API oil - 0.51 BTU/lb - F salt water - 0.94 BTU/lb - F Average fluid inlet temperature 500F Average heated fluid temperature - 1140F ASSUMPTIONS Two barrels of salt water produced per day Heating value of casing head gas is 1000BTU per cubic foot Oil of 40 API gravity TOTAL PRODUCT HEAT INPUT A. Oil (475 barrels) (42 U.S. gallons/barrel) (6.87 pounds/gallon) (0.51 BTU/pound - F) (640F) =4,473,524 BTU B. Salt Water (14 barrels) (42 U.S. gallons/barrel) (8.56 pounds/gallon) (0.94 BTU/pound - F) (640F) = 302,802 BTU GAS HEAT RELEASE (6465 cubic feet) (1000 BTU/cubic foot) = 6,465,000 BTUH EFFICIENCY 4,776,326 BTU --------------- =73.9% 6,465,000 BTU An efficient and flexible system has been shown above and while the invention has been shown and described in detail in the drawings and specification, it will be apparent to those skilled in the art that many changes may be made in the construction and arrangement of parts without departing from the scpoe of the invention as defined in the appended claims.

Claims: CLAIMS: 1. An oil and water emulsion treating apparatus comprising: (a) a vessel (18) having an emulsion inlet (20) adjacent to the top of said vessel, a water outlet (32) at the bottom of said vessel and a treated oil outlet (36) at the top of said vessel, and (b) a heater having a combustion chamber (40) external to said vessel and an array of heat pipes (38) contained in part within said combustion chamber (40) and extending into the said vessel (18) and into the emulsion to break the emulsion into free water and treated oil, the said heat pipes (38) being mutually parallel and forming an acute angle with the horizontal as a plane of reference. 2. An apparatus according to claim 1, including a source of fuel (42) connected to said heater. 3. An apparatus according to claim 1 or 2, wherein the combustion chamber ends of the said heat pipes (38) each have a plurality of heat conducting fins (16) to increase heat transfer from the chamber ( 4n ) to the pipes (38). 4. An apparatus according to any preceding claim, wherein the said acute angle is ten degrees. 5. An apparatus according to any preceding claim, wherein the working fluid contained within the said heat pipes (38) is toluol. 6. A heater adapted for use with an oil and water emulsion treater comprising: (a) a housing having a combustion chamber (40) positioned external to the treater, (b) a gas burner in said housing to maintain a high temperature in said combustion chamber (40), and (c) an array of heat pipes (38) enclosed in part within said combustion chamber (40) and extending beyond said housing and arranged to penetrate into the treater, the said heat pipe (38) being mutually parallel one to another, each respective heat pipe axis forming an acute angle with a horizontal plane of reference. 7. A heater according to claim 6, wherein the said angle is 10 degrees. 8. A heater according to claim 6 or 7,wherein the working fluid contained within each respective heat pipe is toluol. 9. A method of separating an oil-water emulsion comprising the steps of: (a) containing the emulsion in a vessel; (b) generating heat for said emulsion by a heat com bustion source external to said vessel; (c) transferring the heat generated in said source into the said vessel by evaporating, condensing, and surface-tension pumping of a liquid; and (d) exhausting the separated oil and water from the vessel. 10. A method according to claim 9, wherein the said liquid is toluol.

Inventors: SPEHAR, JOHN JAMES
Applicants: GATTLIN RESEARCH CO., INC.
Application year: 1984
Main classification: B01D17
IPC codes: C10G33, F28D15, B01D17