Fifth IEEE International Symposium on Embedded Computing
Design of ARM-Based Inverter Electrostatic Dehydrator for Crude Oil
Emulsions
Jun Xu1, Hailong Yu1, Feijian Zhang1, BoYou1 and Ruijie Li2
1
College of Automation, Harbin University of Science and Technology, Harbin, China
2
No.2 Oil Production Company Daqing Oil Field Company Ltd. Daqing, China
xujun@hrbust.edu.cn
Abstract
In view of the traditional SCR (silicon controlled
rectifier) phase shifting technology, the electric
dehydration controller existed high power
consumption, low dehydrated efficiency and being
difficult to establish the electric field. This paper has
proposed a new crude oil electrostatic dehydration
controller based on ARM (Advanced RSIC Machine)
technology. The crude oil electric dehydration
controller using combined AC/DC electrician
technology. Through the three-phase and 480v AC
input, it overcomes the three-phase load unbalanced
problem caused by the normal single-phase AC input
of the traditional dehydration controller. Use the IGBT
(Isolated Gate Bipolar Transistors) technology to
produce a variable amplitude and variable frequency
voltage supply for the primary of the transformer. The
dehydrated tube electrode produces the high-pressure
variable AC/DC field. The water drop accumulation
and precipitation are caused mainly by the effort of
electric field in the process of dehydration, and then it
realizes highly-efficient crude oil dehydration.
1. Introduction
The Daqing Oil Field SaNan developmental area
dominated by No.2 oil production company factory of
Daqing oil field company Ltd. was put into
development in 1964. The synthesis watery of entire
area water drive had been close to 90% by 2005, so
that it would soon enter the special high watery stage
development. The oil field development water drive
and the polymer drive were developed simultaneously.
The first class oil layer had developed the polymer
drive comprehensively; and the second class oil layer
will soon enter the polymer drive development. In
order to enhance the oil field recovery ratio further, the
strong alkali-polymer-surface active agent three
978-0-7695-3348-3/08 $25.00 2008 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/SEC.2008.47
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components combination drive industrialization field
test and the polymer surface active agent dual drive
room study regarded as representative three times
extracting new technology are carrying on brainstorm.
The water drive segmentation mining technology is
further consummated, which has formed the
consummated technical brainstorm series.
Many surface facilities including three-phase
separators, produced water treatment stations, oily
sludge systems and injection systems ( refer as to the
combination Stations in this paper) in Daqing oilfield
have server the sulfide problems, which has impacted
normal operation at those facilities including electric
dehydrator and rest of surface facility systems. The
water is dispersed as small droplets in crude oil in form
of W/O (water-in-oil) drops emulsions and some of
them forming a water-oil layer at the oil-water or oil-
polymer contact in the skimmer tanks. The phenomena
make the water treatment process more complicated
and less efficiency of oil/water separation. At the
meantime, skimmed oil mixed W/O was recovered and
pumped back to the crude oil dewatering chamber
where electric dehydrator systems were used. With
significant W/O in the oil recovered from skimmer
tanks, the electric dehydrator systems could not be
operated successfully because of the W/O layer makes
short cut in electric field within the crude oil dewater
chamber[1].
Currently there are 66 crude oil dewatering stations
in Daqing oilfield, among which 33 electric dehydrator
stations trip over frequently because of such water-oil
problem, which has threatened to safe production of
the oilfield. As an example, a very serious production
events was taken place in 2004 because 4 out of 5
electric dehydrators in an oil dewatering station were
disrupted, which directly caused 269 wells shut-in for
quite sometimes, impacted oil production over 4000
tons [1, 2].
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 The crude oil dehydration is an important part in the
crude oil process. At present various oil fields all use
electricity-chemistry dehydration method, namely the
conventional electric dehydration method. Among the
many different methods of demulsification, the
electrostatic method in a high voltage field is one of
the most effective and simplest demulsification
methods. The electrostatic forces caused the
coalescence of fine water drops and their growth to
larger drops which then readily fell by electric forces
or gravity [3-5].
The production facility shown in Figure 1 has four
or six oil dehydration vessels operating in parallel. Figure 2. Electrostatic dehydrator
Each horizontal dehydrator is 3 m diameter 35 m
long with AC/DC electrostatic technology, open 2. Principle
bottom spreaders, either steel or composite high
voltage electrodes and pipe collectors. The electrostatic 2.1. Configuration dehydrator
transformers are 380 or 220 volt, single phase rated for
50 kVA [6, 7]. The electrostatic dehydrator apparatus used in this
The factors impacting on crude oil dehydration are study is schematically shown in Figure 2. Double steel
many, such as the nature of crude oil, electric field electrodes are arranged in parallel in the apparatus.
strength, electrode shape, the voltage waveform, Alternating electrodes are energized with a positive
temperature and pressure etc. On the basis of full voltage and adjacent electrodes are energized with a
consideration of these factors, a new type of inverter negative voltage. The positive and negative voltages
crude oil electric dehydration instrument is developed. are supplied from a 20 kV transformer [8].
It is depended on the technique of a variable amplitude When the wet crude oil is fed into the Dehydrator,
and variable frequency voltage supply for the primary the wet crude oil flows evenly up through the grid
of the transformer based on IGBT and ARM. It is assembly and is subjected to an intense AC/DC
proved through experiment that the dehydrator can electrostatic field created by the high voltage charge
realize continuous dehydration of water-in-crude oil imposed on the grid electrodes. The electrostatic field
emulsions by application of a high voltage AC/DC aids the small water droplets to coalesce to form larger
field. The dehydration rates are investigated under droplets and thus be able to fall under gravity from the
various operating conditions. It has the properties of crude oil. The water droplets fall to the oil water
adjusting the voltage and frequency automatically, interface, below the inlet distribution headers, and are
over current protection, over voltage protection, removed under level control. The clean, dry oil rises to
displaying the dehydrator parameters and the curve of the top of the vessel where it is collected and removed.
dewater current versus dewater voltage based on LCD.
2.2. Electrostatic fields

Dehydrator manufacturers rely on three

fundamental types of electrostatic fields to enhance
coalescence of the dispersed water droplets, namely
direct current electrostatic fields, alternating current
electrostatic fields and combined AC/DC electrostatic
fields. DC electrostatic fields are highly efficient but
can promote electrolytic corrosion. On the other hand,
AC electrostatic fields are used by all manufacturers
due to their tolerance of high water cuts and non-
electrolytic nature. Finally, combined AC/DC
Figure 1. Field site electrostatic fields provide the high water tolerance of
the AC electrostatic field with the high efficiency of
the DC electrostatic field [9].

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 Figure 3. Electrostatic field

An aggressive electrostatic process utilizes a

combination AC / DC electrostatic fields, which
consist of an array of horizontal, parallel electrodes
generally positioned diametrically across the vessel
just above the center line as shown in Figure 3. The
dehydrator utilize from one to three transformers Figure 4. Coalescence forces
containing a pair of reversed diodes to establish a DC
Dipole forces are established by the alignment of
electrostatic field between adjacent electrodes. For an
the polar water molecules in the droplet and are
AC electrostatic field is established between the
proportional to the electric field gradient, the water
bottom of the electrodes and the oil/water interface.
droplet diameter and the spacing between droplets.
Through the action of strong electric field, drops in
2.3. Electrostatic forces crude emulsion induce polarization through the action
of electric field. The coalescence ability can be
A water droplet suspended between a pair of calculated by the following formula
electrodes is acted upon by five forces as indicated in
Figure 5. Two of these five forces are gravitational and a6 2
ds = 6 KE 4 (2)
hydraulic. Gravitational forces equal to the weight of d
the droplet act to move the water droplet toward the
bottom of the vessel. Drag forces imposed by the rising Where K is constant, E is the intensity of applied
oil moving pass the water droplet act to lift it toward electric field, a is radius of the droplets, d is distance
the oil outlet. If the water droplet is larger than the between two droplet-centres.
Stokes droplet diameter as calculated by the equation Coalescence of droplets consists of three steps: (1)
in Figure 6, the weight is greater than the drag and the Motion and approach of droplets due to gravity; (2)
water droplet will be separated from the oil. drainage of the film separating the droplets; and (3)
breakdown of the film and coalescence of the droplets,
1/ 2 or of both, the droplets and the boundary layer .
180vv
ds = (1)
g ( w 0 )
Where ds is the diameter of the dispersed water
droplet, 0 is the dynamic viscosity of continuous oil
phase, vv is the relative velocity of the dispersed
water droplet through the continuous oil phase, g is the
constant of gravitational acceleration, 0 , w are the
densities of the dispersed aqueous phase and
continuous oil phase respectively.
Figure 5. Droplet forces

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 The electrical demulsification effect is primarily
related to the first step, that is, an increased rate of
motion of the droplets in an electric field, but the
breakdown of the film can be influenced by electrical
forces at higher frequencies. The electrostatic method
is based on the coalescence and precipitation of water
droplets as shown in the figure 5. When the electric
field is applied, the water droplets are polarized by the
induced dipole. And as the distance between the
droplets becomes closer, they combine and become
larger droplets. The combined droplets are liable to
precipitate while the precipitation rate of the droplets is
proportional to the square of droplet diameter.
3. Design of ARM-based inverter
The inverted power supply is used the inverted
technology as its core and IGBT as switch to realize
PWM to produce a pulse output. The block diagram of
system is shown in Figure 6.
3.1 Hardware design and implementation
The electrostatic technology to be applied utilizes
a proprietary process controller and transformer
package to produce an electrostatic field that can easily
be optimized for any crude oil. This technology has
been in development for over 10 years and has
demonstrated remarkable performance improvements
in pilot facilities. The transformer consists of three
primary components that are packaged in a single
oilfilled enclosure. Designed to operate on three phase,
480 volts (50 / 60 Hz) the technology overcomes the
load balance problem normally encountered with
single phase electrostatic processes. An ARM-based
process controller defines the voltage control
environment to match the specific needs of the
production as shown in Figure 7.
Figure 6. The block diagram of system
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1 Three phase power supply 2 Rectification 3 Charge 4
IBGT 5 Transformer 6 Load 7 Sensor 8 PWM drive 9
Computer 10 ARM-based controller 11 Man machine
interface 12 alarm
Figure 7. The diagram of electrostatic dehydrator controller
The microcontroller adopts Atmel 16/32-bit
microcontroller AT91M55800A as core processor
which combine the ARM7TDMI processor core with
an on-chip SRAM and a wide range of peripheral
functions, analog interfaces and low-power oscillators
on a monolithic chip. Electrical parameters (voltage,
current, etc.) are sampled and transformed to
appropriate signals to ADC (Analog-to-Digital
Converter) or DI (Digital Input) module.
Microcontroller accepts all data after these modules.
Related information will be displayed on the LCD and
corresponding alarm relay will act if one parameter
goes beyond the limited range. Some parameters (such
as voltage, current,) are displayed on user friendly and
informative active LCD real-timely. Except for USB
interface, the data in the microcontroller can also be
transferred to a PC via RS232C interface [10,11].
The voltage and current of the power supply
feedback signals are detected by hall sensor, sent into
ARM controller, converted by integrated AD module
in the chip and then sent into perform logic operation
and data processing. In the program, the algorithm
implementation process is a control process for one
adjustment in one sampling period, where AD
conversion value are read out and stored by response
interruption, and control algorithm subroutine is called
to determine corresponding algorithm and then to
calculate a new control signal according to the nature
and size of the derivation signal between conversion
values and given value. The new control signal is
enlarged by the drive circuit to control inverter and
then to produce corresponding output adjustment. The
output value approximates the given value
progressively in the circular process. The dynamic
response speed and cutting quality are determined by
the control algorithm for high-speed controller with
nanosecond operation speed in the whole control voltage level necessary to promote effective
process. According to it, this paper proposes a new- coalescence. Third, the secondary voltage is rectified
type controller based on ARM technology to realize into positive and negative half-wave outputs. These
fast adjustment and intelligent control of power supply polarized, half-wave voltages are then applied to the
output characteristics. electrodes in a dehydrator.
An ARM-based process controller defines the
3.2 Software design and implementation voltage control environment to match the specific
needs of the production. Utilizing a medium frequency
The software of the electrostatic dehydrator has transformer overcomes the voltage decay associated
been developed with real time operating system with conventional 50/60 Hz transformers. In wet crude
C/OS-II which is a highly portable, ROMable, very oils the effective impedance may be very low, resulting
scalable, preemptive realtime, multitasking kernel for in a rapid, voltage decay from the process electrodes.
microprocessors and microcontrollers. C/OS-II can This decay reduces the effectiveness of the
manage up to 255 tasks and provides many kinds of dehydration process by pulling the voltage below the
services such as semaphores, mutual exclusion threshold level required for effective dehydration.
semaphores (to reduce priority inversions), event flags, Operating with an increased frequency reduces this
message mailboxes, message queues, task management, voltage decay and effectively sustains the applied
etc.. The C/OS-II is ported to microcontroller voltage above the required threshold. Also, where the
AT91M55800A. And all functions are divided into interfacial tension between the oil and water is low the
eleven user tasks and five interrupt service routines waveform can be reduced to minimize destruction of
based on C/OSII. These eleven user tasks include the water droplets normally caused by the application
task AI, DI, PI, DO, PWM, Anti-sway Control, of 50Hz power.
History Data Store, Human Machine Interface,
Sequence of Events Record, Communication and USB
Flash Disk Store.
All C/OS-II provides services to create a task,
delete a task, check the size of a tasks stack, change a
tasks priority, suspend and resume a task, and get
information about a task. Each task can have the
following five states: dormant, ready, running,
suspending, interrupted. Because the software didnt
use task deleting function OSTaskDel(), each task
software system only have four states except task
dormant state. Tasks and ISRs (Interrupt Service
Routines) in the communicate with one another and
share resources with semaphores, message mailboxes
and message queues implemented. All tasks except idle
task are driven by message to ready state. For an
instance, I/O ISR sends message to task DI and task
PWM, and Timer ISR sends message to task AI and
task HMI. If there is no task ready for running, the
C/OS-II-based embedded system will run idle task to
wait for user task ready. A flowchart of operation
performed by the microcontroller-based electrostatic
dehydrator is shown in Figure 8.

4. Experiments and results

First, the 480 volts is conditioned using IGBT
technology to produce a variable amplitude and Figure.8. Flowchart of controller
variable frequency voltage supply for the primary of
the transformer. Second, the medium frequency
transformer steps up the input voltage to a secondary

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 Reducing the frequency of the waveform can
prevent the destruction of the large water droplet
required for effective dehydration. Furthermore, the
shape of the voltage waveform can be selected to
achieve the best dehydration results. Finally, the
minimum and maximum voltage levels can be set to
increase the percentage of the entrained water that is
swept by the electrostatic voltage. Maximum voltages
reach the smallest water droplets with sufficient energy
to develop a surface charge and promote coalescence.
Reducing the voltage to a minimum level will
maximize the droplet growth to promote a rapid
sedimentation rate. The PC-based controller developed
to control the output of the variable voltage / frequency
transformer is capable of producing a nearly infinite
variety of waveform configurations. Selectable
variables include the frequency of the voltage, the
maximum and minimum voltages applied to the
transformer and the cyclic pattern and rate used to
drive the transformer. The exponential PWM
waveform of driver (a, b) and the output waveform of
IGBT (c, d) is shown in Figure 9. The exponential
waveform of secondary voltage is shown in Figure 10.
Figure 9. The output wave of driver and IGBT
Figure 10. The secondary waveform
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5. Conclusion
This paper has proposed a new crude oil
electrostatic dehydration controller based on ARM and
IBGT technology. The dehydrated tube electrode
produces the high-pressure variable AC/DC field. The
water drop accumulation and precipitation are caused
mainly by the effort of electric field in the process of
dehydration, and then it realizes highly-efficient crude
oil dehydration. This electrostatic dehydrator system is
now ready for a field trial in No.2 oil production
company factory of Daqing oil field company Ltd.,
China. This variable voltage / frequency power supply
has been developed during the past 2 years, with the
ability to fashion a waveform that is optimized for any
crude oil.
6. References
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Engineer, Critical Mass Systems, Grapevine, Texas, August
1977.
[2] Aske, N., Kallevik, H. and Sjoblom, J.: Water-in-crude
oil emulsion stability studied by Critical Electric Field
Measurements. Correlation to Physico-Chemical Parameters
and Near-Infrared Spectroscopy, Journal of Petroleum
Science and Engineering, Trondheim, Norway, April 2002.
[3] Burris, Donald R., Dual Polarity oil dehydration,
Petroleum Engineer, pp 30 41,1998.
[4] Byers, Charles H. and Amarnath, Ammi, Understand the
potential of electro-separations, Chemical Engineering
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[5] Draxler, J. and Marr, R., Design Criteria for
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[6] Eow, John S. and Ghadiri, Mojtaba. Motion,
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[7] Ivanitskii, K., Modeling of deformation and breakup of
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[8] Sams, Gary W. and Wallace, Harry G., Field Trials
Scheduled for New Dehydration Technology, Offshore
Technology Conference, 15353. 2003.
[9] Sams, Gary W. and Wallace, Harry G., Improving
Process Efficiencies by Optimizing Fluid Hydraulics in
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[10] Elarde, J.V., Brewster, G.B., Performance analysis of
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[11] Chunsheng, WangThe nuclear data collecting system
designed with ARM and C/OS-, Nuclear Electronics &
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