(46b) Use of Video Enhanced Microscopy for Characterization of Solid-Liquid-Liquid Mixtures

The handling of oil wastes from the Venezuelan petroleum industry lead to the need of proper characterization of complex mixtures of viscous emulsified oil and water mixtures and containing solid particles up to a volume fraction of 0.2. Although some particle size devices have gained a lot of popularity, none of them is able to distinguish between drops and solids, and few are able to handle such viscous oily samples. This paper discusses the use of a simple and old technique, the optical microscopy, enhanced by the use of digital video capabilities and image analysis software. An Eclipse 600 microscope (Nikon, USA) coupled with the Image Pro Plus package (Media Cybernetics, USA) was used for the characterization of complex mixtures of oil production wastes. Several thousand of particles were counted and their projected area was measured. A discussion is giving about the different corrections that require the original result in order to extract the most reliable information from the image analysis. The developed technique allows unique features like the determination of the fraction of droplets that exist in the form of non-coalesced agglomerates, which is very useful information for treatment decisions. When cross-linked with the results obtained by standards ASTM procedures, it can be inferred the amount of disperse phase that exist in the for of free water forming large drops or even water sacks that are usually not sampled for microscope slides. Although it is cumbersome in sample handling the computed aided analysis allows obtaining a lot of information which is usually lost and can now be used for decision making and even for live check of the performance of demulsifiers and others destabilization techniques.