Viscometer brings polymer benefit to chemical firm
A
Hydramotion product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team
May 24, 2006
Intrinsically safe viscometer provides valuable insight into a polymer production process for privately-owned oilfield chemical company in the USA.
An intrinsically safe viscometer from Hydramotion for in-line viscosity measurement has provided valuable insight into a polymer production process for Champion Technologies of Houston, Texas, USA.
Champion is a privately-owned oilfield chemical company with a significant presence in the major oilfields of the world and sales and administrative offices in over 30 countries.
It supplies the global oil and gas industry with proprietary specialty chemicals, including foamers, hydrate inhibitors, scale control agents and emulsion breakers (demulsifiers), liquid polymers that are used in the dewatering of crude oil.
Viscosity is important for quality control during emulsion breaker production, because the product cannot be applied in the field if it is too viscous.
The production process involves an oxyalkylation polymerisation reaction at 160C in 11,000 litre tanks.
Engineers can follow the progress of the reaction by monitoring the viscosity of the mix, which builds from less than one to over 500cP as the reaction proceeds.
Needing a robust and reliable in-line viscometer suitable for use in class one, division one group D hazardous areas, Champion came to Hydramotion.
"We chose Hydramotion because it could offer us an intrinsically safe instrument that's easy to use and low maintenance", said Jason Laws, Senior Process Engineer at Champion Technologies.
"Another important point was that the Hydramotion viscometer was very competitive pricewise against other machines".
Hydramotion supplied an intrinsically safe XL7 high-temperature in-line viscometer tailored to Champion's requirements.
As the reaction mixture is highly corrosive (pH less than three), the monolithic sensor was constructed from Hastelloy C.
Using the instrument in the monomer and polymer stages, Champion was immediately able to get the narrow target viscosity it wanted.
"It exceeded engineers' expectations when regarding in-line viscosity", said Laws.
"In addition, obtaining continuous viscosity data at line temperature gave the engineers an insight into the process that had not been possible with earlier off-line measurements".
"The XL7 viscometer has helped us determine reaction issues that needed to be overcome".
"We can see far more in the reaction than we expected".
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