Rocsole gives a mature-field operator a clear view of oil, emulsion, and water through EOR treatment, the platform behind EnerCorp’s LiquiDetect
The Problem
This operator was running a polymer-flood Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) program and wanted to take it to the full field. Before they could, they had to understand how the back-produced EOR fluids were affecting oil-water separation, and they had no reliable way to measure it. EOR chemicals shift the density of the oil and emulsion, and when those densities converge the interface between them nearly disappears.
The instrumentation they had could not keep up:
A differential-pressure level control device that could not tell the oil, emulsion, and water interfaces apart, especially during the first flowback from the wells- Almost no density contrast between the oil and emulsion layers, which left conventional control effectively blind to where one fluid ended and the next began
The Solution
LiquiDetect, powered by Rocsole’s electrical tomography, sees the oil, emulsion, and water inside the vessel even when the density contrast between layers all but disappears, exactly the condition that blinds conventional level control.
The Results
Over roughly twelve months, the system continuously resolved the oil, emulsion, and water interfaces through the EOR treatment cycles, including a reverse emulsion the existing control could not see, and its accuracy was confirmed against independent surveillance monitoring and lab sampling.
The visibility did more than track levels. Early data flagged a turbulent zone inside the vessel that looked like a mix of foam and emulsion. Reviewed alongside the design and production data, it turned out a large volume of gas was overloading the inlet device and driving foam into the liquids, an operational problem the operator had no way to see before. Separately, analysis of the dispersion-band height combined with production data exposed a fault in the chemical-treatment equipment that operators had not detected.
- Catch emulsion before it costs them by seeing emulsion presence and severity in real time, instead of finding out downstream when oil quality or water disposal numbers slip.
- Right-size chemical treatment by knowing when de-emulsifier is actually needed rather than running pumps at default settings around the clock.
- Replace level instruments they no longer trust, including differential-pressure and guided wave radar devices that cannot resolve an emulsion layer when densities converge.
- See the full vessel, not a single point, with a continuous profile of oil, emulsion, and water, using conductivity and permittivity measurements to distinguish fluid layers rather than relying on a single fixed measurement point.
- Read through contamination and coating, LiquiDetect does not rely on a single-point or surface-based measurement principle. Its Electrical Tomography approach captures distributed process data, making it less sensitive to localized contamination, wax or coating effects compared to conventional technologies.
