The present disclosure refers to the development of novel random bipolymers, which are comprised of alkyl acrylate and alkoxy alkyl acrylate monomers, as hydrophobic and hydrophilic components, respectively. These bipolymers are synthesized by means of semi-continuous emulsion polymerization, under strict conditions of monomer deficiency, to ensure the randomness and homogeneity of the chains. The application in dissolution of these random bipolymers has shown a dehydrating capacity superior to that of polyethers and phenolic resins, with the additional advantage of being soluble in crude oil. The random bipolymers show excellent performance as breakers of water-in-crude oil emulsions, coalescers of water droplets and clarifiers of the removed aqueous phase, and are chemically stable under acidic conditions.

A coalescer is installable on a flow path for a target liquid to be treated containing oil droplets. The coalescer includes sheets of metal mesh with, for example, a plain weave, twill weave, or thick weave stacked on one another to form mesh layers and interlayer portions between the layers. The metal mesh has a surface extending along a flow of the target liquid. Oil droplets come into contact with either or both of warp wires and weft wires to form an oil film that moves downstream with the target liquid flow. The oil film grows into larger droplet particles at downstream ends of the mesh layers. The larger droplet particles leave the coalescer with the flow of the target liquid.

A process of dewatering oil sands/coal tailings includes generating nanobubble water, mixing a chemical dispersant into the nanobubble water to form a nanobubble-dispersant mixture, adding tailings to the nanobubble-dispersant mixture to form a nanobubble-dispersant-tailings mixture, and agitating the nanobubble-dispersant-tailings mixture to form an agitated nanobubble-dispersant-tailings mixture having a solid portion and a liquid portion. The solid portion is thereafter separated from the liquid portion. The agitation may be a centrifugal motion or shaking motion to agitate the nanobubble-dispersant-tailings mixture The chemical dispersant may be sodium hydroxide dispersant for asphaltenes and the volume of the tailings added may be substantially equal to the volume of the nanobubble water generated. An oil layer may further be skimmed off the liquid portion a polymer clarifier may also be added to the liquid portion. The process may be applied to achieve accelerated tailings processing for rapid and economic environmental remediation.

A swirl-type demulsification and dehydration device for oil-water emulsions, including a swirler. An open end of a swirl chamber of the swirler faces towards an underflow pipe and communicates with the underflow pipe through a composite curved pipe section coaxial with the swirl chamber. A large-diameter end of a concave arc transition section is connected to the open end of the swirl chamber, is the same with the swirl chamber in inner diameter. A large-diameter end of a straight cone transition section is tangent to a small-diameter end of the concave arc transition section. A small-diameter end of the straight cone transition section is tangent to a large-diameter end of a convex elliptical arc transition section. A small-diameter end of the convex elliptical arc transition section is connected to the underflow pipe.

Systems and methods for separation of hydrocarbon containing fluids are provided. More particularly, the disclosure is relevant to separating fluids having a gas phase, a hydrocarbon liquid phase, and an aqueous liquid phase using indirect heating. In general, the system uses a first three-phase gas separation. The gas stream separated out is cooled with the resulting hydrocarbon condensates reintroduced to the stream of hydrocarbon-liquid phase that was separated from the fluid. The resulting combined stream can be cooled or heated as necessary.

The present invention relates to a method for the separation of an oily mixture from an aqueous mixture and a kit for use in said method.

A method may include: performing a treatment operation on at least a portion of a subterranean formation using an oil-in-water emulsion treatment fluid that comprises an oleaginous phase and an aqueous phase; recovering at least a portion of the oil-in-water emulsion treatment fluid from the portion of the subterranean formation; introducing a quaternary ammonium compound into the recovered portion of the oil-in-water emulsion treatment fluid at a well site; and mechanically separating at least a portion of the recovered portion of the oil-in-water emulsion treatment fluid into an oleaginous fluid and an aqueous fluid

A process is provided for separating hydrophobic material from a mixture of hydrophobic and hydrophilic material using peptide-based amphiphilic organogelators.

A water separating screen for a filter element in a liquid filter, the water separating screen including: a screen fabric having end faces; and a fabric carrier; a screen fabric arranged on the fabric carrier and encircling a longitudinal axis, the screen fabric having axial end faces, the longitudinal axis defining an axial direction; wherein the fabric carrier in an area between the end faces exclusively has longitudinal struts, which at least substantially extend in the direction of the longitudinal axis and which are elastic in a radial direction.

A system for separating a multiphase well stream into a solids fraction, a water fraction, an oil fraction and a gas fraction includes a transportable support surface; a solids separator which is mounted on the support surface and is configured to receive the multiphase well stream and separate the well stream into a first heavy fraction primarily comprising the solids fraction and a first light fraction primarily comprising the gas, oil and water fractions; and a multiphase fluid separator which is mounted on the support surface and includes a first separator section and a second separator section which is positioned vertically below and connected directly to the first separator section. The first separator section is configured to receive the first light fraction and separate the first light fraction into a second light fraction primarily comprising the gas fraction and a second heavy fraction primarily comprising the oil and water fractions. The second separator section is configured to receive the second heavy fraction and separate the second heavy fraction into a third light fraction primarily comprising the oil fraction and a third heavy fraction primarily comprising the oil fraction.