Effective Separation and Hydrocarbon Accounting in Water-in-Oil Emulsion through Demulsification Using Formulated Plant Extracts

Background and Objective: Crude oil emulsions have been one of the major problems of the petroleum industry, as oil combines with water during production. This work focused on resolving water-in-oil emulsion using plant-based formulated demulsifiers made from cashew leaf (Anacardium occidentale B-1) and Moringa leaf extract (Moringa oleifera, C-1) and respective additives. Materials and Methods: The Soxhlet extraction technique with absolute ethanol as the solvent was employed as the extraction method to extract the solvents. Static bottle test and dynamic test were conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of these green demulsifiers at different concentration dosages and rpm and the results were compared with a chemical-based conventional demulsifier (pt6020). A single-factor ANOVA was performed at a significance level of 0.05. Results: It was observed that only B-1 was effective while C-1 performance was very poor in resolving the emulsion. At a dosage of 0.02 mL for static bottle and dynamic tests, the B-1 demulsifier competed favorably with the conventional demulsifier with a 0.1 mL volume of water separated and a percent relative error of 2%. In fact, at 30 min of the static bottle test, the B-1 demulsifier performed better than the conventional demulsifier, separating 4.8 mL of water compared to 4.6 mL by the conventional demulsifier. Conclusion: The B-1 shows a good prospect as a formidable demulsifier and could be used as an alternative to the chemical-based demulsifiers with 0.87 R² value and p-values of 1% for one-tail and two-tail tests; both less than α = 0.05. The C-1 could be explored more to investigate its poor performance since it showed a propensity as a demulsifier.