(228g) Characterizing Water/Crude Oil Emulsions with Application to Methane Hydrate Blockages Using Nuclear Magnetic Resonance

Water/crude oil emulsions are of particular interest concerning methane hydrate blockages during crude oil production. Specifically, it has been shown in recent work that stable water/crude oil emulsions have the ability to prevent methane hydrate blockages in flowing systems. Therefore, to quantify and understand the formation of methane hydrates, water/crude oil emulsion structure should be quantified. Using a 2 MHz spectrometer, nuclear magnetic resonance is used to investigate the relationship between water/crude oil morphology and methane hydrate formation. In this work, drop size distributions are obtained for crude oil emulsions as well as model systems using the pulsed field gradient with diffusion editing and pulsed field gradient techniques. The amount of water converted to hydrate is monitored by performing transient CPMG measurements. In addition, one dimensional imaging measurements are performed to monitor the transient behavior of the emulsions. Interfacial tension and oscillating pendant drop measurements are also performed to quantify the interfacial elasticity of the interface between the brine and crude oil. This work provides useful information about the relationship between crude oil emulsions and methane hydrate blockages.