Rocsole gives a mature-field operator real-time control of emulsion and produced-water quality in a high-pressure separator, the platform behind EnerCorp’s LiquiDetect
The Problem
As the field matured, more emulsion started entering the separator, and it hit the operator on both ends. It dragged down the quality of the crude headed to export and the quality of the produced water headed to disposal, two specs they cannot afford to miss.
The response was the response most operators fall back on, and it was getting expensive:
Rising emulsion volumes as the field aged, degrading both crude export quality and produced-water disposal quality- A chemical program that kept climbing, more demulsifier and water-treatment chemical, with no clear view of whether the dosing actually matched the emulsion in the vessel
The Solution
The project began as a pilot in one High-Pressure Production Trap on one of the field’s oil trains, the vessel where rising emulsion was hurting most. Rocsole’s Electrical Tomography Technology based LiquiDetect was installed through an existing top nozzle and connected to the Distributed Control System, where it tracked the emulsion layer accurately and showed how it dispersed through the separator in real time, even at pressure.
The early value was clear enough that the operator asked to extend the profiler to cover the full produced-water region as well, so they could catch a high-oil-in-water condition before it became a reportable excursion.
LiquiDetect, powered by Rocsole’s electrical tomography, shows the emulsion layer and the full operating range of the vessel in real time, so chemical dosing can follow what is actually happening instead of defaulting higher.
The Results
The operator gained a real-time view of the emulsion layer and the full produced-water region, enough to manage chemical against actual conditions and head off high-oil-in-water excursions, and is now rolling the system out across the remaining production traps in the facility.
Instead of inferring vessel conditions from a single point and treating harder to stay safe, the operator could watch the emulsion build and disperse and see oil-in-water across the entire operating range. That changes the chemical program from treating blind into dosing against what the vessel is actually doing, and it protects the downstream produced-water facilities from the excursions that are costly to recover from.
Proving it on one vessel and extending the profiler was enough to commit the operator to deploying it across the remaining High-Pressure Production Traps, with the goal of lifting performance facility-wide. The strongest result here is not a single reading. It is that the operator chose to scale it.
- 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 lose accuracy in difficult or chaotic conditions.
- 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.
