Yure Gomes de Carvalho Queirós

Polymer science applied to petroleum production

The science of polymers, more specifically, synthesis, characterization, and physicochemical properties in solutions, has wide application in the petroleum industry, which uses polymers as components of fluids or additives to correct problems that affect oil production and/or increase production costs. Polymers are utilized during all phases, from drilling to treatment of oil and water. Research on the synthesis of polymers and their respective characterization aims to develop new molecules, with controlled structures, for various applications, having one or more objectives, namely: (1) to enhance operating efficiency; (2) to reduce costs; and (3) to elucidate mechanisms of action that can help in the development of new technologies. The evaluation of the physicochemical properties of a polymer in solution in many cases permits establishing useful correlations between its properties and performance in a specific application, besides providing insight into the mechanisms inherent in the production system, as is the case of stabilization of asphaltenes. Our research group has applied the knowledge of polymer science to the petroleum industry, focusing on the following functions: viscosification, inhibition of clay swelling, formation of filter cake, drag reduction, divergence, modification of wax crystals, stabilization of asphaltenes, emulsification, demulsification, and cleaning of solids systems contaminated with petroleum, among others.

Materiais poliméricos para tratamento de água oleosa: utilização, saturação e regeneração

Polymeric resins have been used as alternative materials for treating oily waters from the petroleum industry, which have already been treated by conventional methods. The objective of this work was to evaluate the purification degree of synthetic oily waters when treated in fixed bed columns packed with hydrophilic/lipophilic resins. Synthetic oily waters were prepared and fluorimetry was used to determine the total grease and oil content (TGOC) of the fresh oily water and the oily water eluted by the column. The results showed that the treated oily water presented a TGOC close to zero ppm. The kinetic study showed that the contaminant removal efficiency slightly depends on the system elution flow rate; optimum removal values were reached at a 7.0 mL/min flow rate. The passage of a water volume 11,087 times the volume of the column bed was not sufficient to observe its complete saturation. Preliminary tests of column regeneration and re-use showed its potential to be used for more than 1 cycle of oily water treatment.

Determination of oil-in-water using nanoemulsions as solvents and UV visible and total organic carbon detection methods.

The aim of this study was to investigate the application of oil in water (O/W) nanoemulsion as solvent in the extraction step for determination of oil content in oily water, measured using a UV visible spectrophotometer (UV-vis) and a total organic carbon (TOC) analyzer. The optical micrographs and distribution size curves showed that the use of a small amount of nanoemulsion was capable of transforming the oily water in a colloidal dispersion that can be read in the UV-vis and TOC-VCHS devices. The oil content results obtained showed great accuracy between the measurements, with very low average standard deviation (∼5%) for both UV-vis and TOC-VCHS. The new methods suggested in this work are very promising, since they allow simple, quick and accurate analyses, and especially require a lower volume of solvent (less than 1%) compared to those used in conventional analytic methods.