Improvement of Oil and Water Separation in Three-Phase Conventional Separator Using Hydrocyclone Inlet Device

This report entitled Improvement of Oil and Water Separation in Three-Phase Conventional Separator Using Hydrocyclone Inlet Device. The main objective is to investigate the effectiveness of HID in improving the oil and water separation process in a mature field with high percentage of water produced in the production. Mature field has always been related to production with high water produced, known as high water cut. A conventional separator cannot anticipate large inflow of water. Production with high water cut will reduce the separation efficiency and thus cannot recover hydrocarbon to its optimum. It has been found out that a Hydrocyclone Inlet Device (HID) can improve the hydrocarbon separation and maximize recovery of liquid hydrocarbon from fluid stream. HID is a device located at the inlet of separator and using cyclonic effect to enhance the separation process by inducing a centrifugal flow path within its tapered tubes. There are two stages of project milestone which are project development and implementation. Both stages are run within one year time frame. The scopes of study during project development are feasibility study and design prototype. As for project implementation stage, the scopes of work are construct prototype, design and conduct experiment, performing data analysis and evaluation of results. A small, basic prototype of gravitational separator with HID was constructed to study the cyclonic effect of oil and water separation. The investigation was done by conducting several experiments using separator with and without HID from low to high water-oil ratio percentages. The result shows that HID will always improve the efficiency of separation in term of separation time reduction about 20 to 35% regardless of water cut percentages. Volume of oil recovered increased through improved separation up to 14 %. Emulsion thickness is also reduced faster than conventional separator at 1st minute of separation. In conclusion, Hydrocyclone Inlet Device is feasible to retrofit with conventional separator as to improve the oil and water separation in high water production.