Technology Unit

The Oil-Water mixture goes to the Dehydrator / Desalter, a horizontal cylindrical tank that provides long enough residence time to separate the water and oil mixture in two phases. Some water droplets diameters are so small that they could not be separated by gravity; so, an electrostatic field between two electrodes installed into the desalter is used to promote coalescence. Due to the dipolar nature of the water molecule, this electric field promotes an attraction with the other water molecules in the neighbor droplets promoting coalescence.