Oil Recovery-Slop Oil and Bilge Water
Water-in-oil emulsions are among the most persistent challenges in oil recovery and refining. Stabilized by fine particles, surfactants, and high interfacial tension, emulsions resist natural separation and can render valuable oil streams unusable. Emulsion Treatment is the precision chemical designed to disrupt these emulsions, restore oil quality, and minimize waste handling costs.
How Emulsion Treatment works
In untreated emulsions, microscopic water droplets quickly become coated with solids such as iron sulphides, clays, silts, paraffins, asphaltenes, and organic acids. This coating prevents coalescence into larger droplets, making gravity separation nearly impossible. Very small droplets (<1 μm) require chemical and centrifugal assistance to separate effectively. Without treatment, emulsions increase disposal costs, reduce oil value, and slow down operations.
- Disrupts Stability – Specially designed surfactants and polymers break down the stabilizing layers around droplets and solids.
- Promotes Coalescence – Advanced wetting agents reduce interfacial tension, enabling droplets to merge into larger, filterable clusters.
- Enables Efficient Separation – Larger droplets settle by gravity, while finer dispersions are easily removed by centrifugation.
- Delivers Clean Phases – Produces a water-free oil phase and a clarified water phase, ready for downstream processing or safe discharge.
Performance Benefits
- Faster Phase Separation – Achieves quicker, more efficient oil–water separation across a wide temperature range.
- Cleaner Oil – Restores usability of crude and refined oils (RFO/HFO) with fewer contaminants.
- Reduced Waste Handling – Minimizes emulsified sludge, lowering disposal volumes and costs.
- Workplace Safety & Sustainability – Water-soluble formulations reduce operator exposure to hazardous fumes and ensure minimal environmental impact.
- Temperature Flexibility – Active from room temperature and upwards, providing stable results under varying process conditions.
- Adaptable Application – Proven effectiveness in crude oils, heavy fuel oils, refinery slop, and marine waste streams.
- Scalable Solution – Functions as a stand-alone chemical treatment or in combination with integrated separation systems.
Product Variants
Lucent offers tailored formulations to meet different operational needs:
- Emulsion Treatment 160 – Water-soluble liquid, also available as a granulate for ease of handling.
- Emulsion Treatment 166 – Water-soluble liquid with a broader application range.
- Emulsion Treatment 176 – Oil-based formulation, suitable for systems where water solubility is not desired.
Integrated Expertise
Lucent’s chemical innovation is backed by the engineering strength of the HEAD Group. By combining advanced surface chemistry with mechanical separation technologies such as decanters and centrifuges, we deliver complete process solutions that maximize recovery, improve efficiency, and minimize waste.