Questions for researchers who studied the heavy crude oil:
1. My oil sample has a quite high viscosity of API 9.3° at 15 °C, and thus I find it pretty hard to process and measure such oil samples. Do you have any good solutions to make such procedures easier? I suppose it will be much easier if the heavy oil samples are in the liquid like state?
2. Do you add any dispersants to ensure the better contact between oil and aqueous phases?
3. Do you apply any separation processes to separate the oil phase and aqueous phase after the aquathermolysis reaction is conducted?
Regarding the 1st question, I had the same problem and to me, the best choice was the usage of a syringe.
The 2nd and the 3rd question highly depend on your particular case, e.g. in my case, I used a high speed homogenizer for dispersion and sample were sometime let alone to be separated while some other time, they have to be separated using demulsifier or electrocoalescence.
Good luck
1) Typically, samples are heated a bit before sampling, homogenization etc. But be careful of losing light fractions if any. Better to check the Initial Boiling Point (IBP) and keep the heating temperature well below that.
2) I do not, but I think this is very system/case specific.
3) Yes, typically done with a cold trap (ice bath that captures mostly water with or without small amounts of light fraction floating on top. You may need to flush the reactor with an inert gas to flow through the trap. If the content is collected in a graduated container--the volume of the water (and weight) can be measured which can be subtracted from the total weight to measure the light fraction.
Regarding the 3rd question: it is pretty hard to separate water from heavy oil due to formation of stable emulsions. We usually use two procedures, the first one is applying Deas-Stark apparatus, and the second is centrifugation. I strongly recommend you use Karl Fischer titration to quantify amount of water in oil after removal.
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