Huntington Beach Crude

Figure 3 shows a representative photomicrograph of the Huntington Beach crude oil-alkaline emulsion taken at 400 magnification in a continuous aqueous phase. The emulsion contained one part by volume of oil phase to twenty parts aqueous phase. 

Figure 4. Drop-size distributions for Huntington Beach crude oil-caustic emulsions...

Figure 9 shows the interfacial tension between the Huntington Beach crude oil and sodium hydroxide as a function of the age of the interface. The interfacial tension is found to increase with the age of the interface. This behavior is similar... 

Figure 7. Kinetics of coalescence for equilibrated samples of Huntington Beach crude oil-caustic systems...

Figures 10 and 11 display both the interfacial tension and electrophoretic mobility data for Huntington Beach crude as a function of NaOH concentration in aqueous solutions containing 1% NaCl. It is to be noted that as in the case of the Long Beach crude, the minimum in interfacial tension corresponds to the maximum in electrophoretic mobility and hence interfacial charge. It should be further stated that this behavior is the same for both the equilibrated system (Figure 10) and for the non-equilibrated system (Figure 11). In the latter case, the interfacial tension reported here is the initial value at a given NaOH concentration. It is observed that the minimum interfacial tension for the pre-equilibrated system lies at about 0.06% NaOH whereas the minimum for the non-equilibrated sample is between 0.003% and 0.005% NaOH concentration. Furthermore, the minimum interfacial tension in this case is below 0.001 dynes/cm.

Figure 10. Effect of caustic concentration on electrophoretic mobility and interfacial tension of nonequilibrated sample of Huntington Beach crude...

Preliminary results on the kinetics of coalescence of both the Long Beach and the Huntington Beach crude oil droplets in caustic systems have been presented. 

Two crude oils were used for this study. Huntington Beach Crude from Well S-47, which has an API of 23.0, an acid number of 0.65 mg KOH/gram of crude, and a bulk shear viscosity of 10 cp at the reservoir temperature of 165 F. The other Californian crude oil used was Wilmington Field Crude from Well C-331. This crude has an API of 21.3, an acid nimiber of 0.86, and a bulk shear viscosity of 35 cps at the reservoir temperature of 125 F. 

Previous work (1) in core floods with the system, Huntington Beach Crude vs. 0.5% Na SiO plus 0.75% NaCl, showed channeling of the crude oil during the injection of the caustic slug (Figure 6). The channeling phenomena along with the fact that emulsions were not observed until after 95% of the recovered oil was produced, could have lead to lower oil recovery efficiencies. To... 

Figure 6, Microwave profiles during tertiary recovery for core test 5 Huntington Beach crude vs. 5000 ppm orthosilicate + 7500 ppm NaCl.

Table 1. Interfacial Tension and Shear Viscosity of the Huntington Beach Crude (LMZ S-47)... 

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