Robotic Screening of Demulsifier Chemistries with an Enhanced-Chemical-Profile

Abstract

Abstract New developed demulsifiers having an Enhanced-Chemical-Profile e.g., cleavable ester or amide bondings which are better biodegradable in seawater, demonstrate to be viable alternatives for conventional oxyalkylate demulsifiers. The Enhanced-Chemical-Profile demulsifiers, have different chemistries and act as stand-alone solution. They demonstrate strong synergy with other Enhanced-Chemical-Profile chemistries as well as conventional oxyalkylate chemistries. Their performance has been benchmarked against a set of oxyalkylate demulsifiers utilizing a robotic screenings test The Robot screening method has proven to be an adequate tool for the screening of demulsification propagation for demulsifiers with different chemistries. The automated protocol replaces a manual operator for the homogenization and time-resolved data collection. From the obtained Turbiscan data, the waterdrop and bs-dryness are extracted which are good descriptors to classify demulsifier performance. The robot screening waterdrop data has a high correlation with manual executed bottle tests. The method could potentially be applied for physio-chemical demuslifier studies.