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Energy & Fuels 2008, 22, 3450–3458
Evaluation of Water Content and Average Droplet Size in Water-in-Crude Oil Emulsions by Means of Near-Infrared Spectroscopy† Augusto M. Araujo,‡,§ Leila M. Santos,‡ Montserrat Fortuny,‡,§ Rosana L. F. V. Melo,‡ Raquel C. C. Coutinho,| and Alexandre F. Santos*,‡,§ Laborato´rio de Engenharia de Petro´leo, Instituto de Tecnologia e Pesquisa, Aracaju, 49032-490, SE, Brazil, Programa de Engenharia de Processos, UniVersidade Tiradentes, AV. Murilo Dantas, 300, Aracaju, 49032-400, SE, Brazil, and CENPES/PETROBRAS, Cidade UniVersita´ria Q.7, Rio de Janeiro, 21949-900, RJ, Brazil ReceiVed April 16, 2008. ReVised Manuscript ReceiVed July 5, 2008
The main objective of this work is evaluating the influence of water content and average droplet size upon the near-infrared (NIR) spectra collected during water-in-crude oil emulsions synthesis and observing whether NIR spectroscopy may be used for predicting these properties simultaneously. It is shown that NIR spectra are sensitive to changes of the water content and average droplet size and that standard empirical models [partial least-squares (PLS)] may be built to correlate these properties and total absorbance at the NIR region properly. Finally, it is shown that these models, built with off-line experiments, allow for the online evaluation of average droplet size and water content in water-in-crude oil emulsions with NIR spectroscopy when low water content (
