With the application of chemical enhanced oil recovery methods, water separation is a major issue in a production facility. Oil/water separation is suppressed with a stable emulsion. The present study evaluated the impact of different emulsifiers in enhanced oil recovery. The effectiveness of each additive such as an alkali, surfactant, or polymer on the stability of the emulsion was anticipated using laser scattering to measure the emulsion’s stability. An artificial neural network was applied to predict the effectiveness of the additives on stabilization/destabilization and to assess how alkali/surfactants, surfactant/polymers, and polymer/surfactants affect the separation profiles. Measurements of the viscosity and zeta potential of residual emulsion clarify that the increase in surfactant makes the emulsion stable and became unstable with the increase in the alkali and polymer. The droplet zeta potential was within −i9~−i5 mV. The absolute value of the zeta potential decreased at a high polymer concentration with a low surfactant concentration resulting in fast flocculence phenomena. With an increase in the surfactant concentration and the presence of high alkali, the droplet’s absolute zeta potential demonstrated an increase in the repulsion force in the emulsions. The study also focuses on the carbon number distribution, wax appearance temperature (WAT) and wax content of four crude oil samples from different field locations (Miri, Angsi, Penara and Dulang). Findings show that crude oil samples with higher mol percent of carbon distribution from C₂₀ to C₄₀ (paraffinic composition) contains higher wax content, wt% and subsequently results in higher wax appearance temperature (WAT). This is obviously shown by the crude oil sample from Penara field. Further similar investigation on other field locations will assist in characterizing the paraffinic composition in Malaysian oil basins.

This paper provides detailed insights into the external pressure vessels. External pressure vessels are designed to perform under extreme operating conditions, so the selection of material and geometry along with stress analysis are fundamental for their optimal efficiency. The objective of this research is to provide a case study of the material, design, and stress generated in the pressure vessel to make it suitable for thermal and load-bearing applications in the aerospace industry. An aluminum alloy was chosen as the design material due to its low density and high strength. The modeling geometry of the alloy was constructed using the ASME section-VIII division-I div code. After the performed Finite Element Analysis (FEA), modeling was carried out deploying the ANSYS design modeler to obtain the stress concentration and failure mode of the model. The present study demonstrates the behavior of a structure under applied load and identifies the weak areas of its geometry. Based on the external stress at the center of the structure, the maximum and minimum stresses computed are 0.763 MPa and 0.00803 MPa, respectively. It was also found that the maximum strain is generated at the center of the structure and is equal to 1.0834e-6 mm/mm, the maximum deformation is equal to 0.00109 mm and also occurred at the center, while the shells of the model are unable to undergo any deformation. FEA results agree with the analytical results, as the errors for hoop stress and equivalent strain are 4.8% and 1.8%, respectively. Thus, the proposed method can be applied to predict the equivalent stress, equivalent strain, total deformation, and stress intensity, which are required for the structural integrity analysis of pressure vessels.