Oil Flux Americas’ “Incorporative” Additives Reduce HSE Risks, Lower Costs

March 17, 2015 | By Business Wire News

HOUSTON

Oil Flux Americas LLC has introduced OilFlux™ specialty chemical additives, a suite of 15 new crude oil production and flow stream additives with advanced “incorporative” technology for the oil industry. According to the company, the additives significantly reduce HSE risk over traditional hexane-based solvents, polymers and organic chemicals, and their ability to work well at low mix ratios without adjustments to heat and pressure can dramatically lower operational costs.

The new additives, which became commercially available in mid-2014 after several years of focused research, development and testing, include OilFlux™ W10, W20, W30, WPF, WAS, BTI P50, SWO, SBH, SCF, SCA and others. The company says the additives are engineered to perform specific functions, such as fluidification, drag reduction, demulsification, PPD/wax separation or paraffin precipitation prevention, asphaltene inhibition, tank cleaning, scale reduction, recuperation and more. The “building block” method by which the additives are formulated allows users to customize them and add features, such as increased fluidification and drag reduction, and even mix in additives to aid in wax/paraffin separation, asphaltene inhibiting, breaking of the crude oil-water emulsion, cleaning, recovery of crude oil, elimination of incrustations and bacteria, foam prevention, sulfhidric acid reduction, crude oil remediation and performance improvement for the end user.

Oil Flux Americas CEO Enrique Muñoz says the decision to create the new formulations, which are broadly classified as anionic/nonionic, was fueled by what he calls “an unprecedented demand for alternatives to the economic and environmental perils of hexane-based solvents, polymers and organic chemicals.”

Muñoz, who co-developed a three-part series on incorporative additive technology titled Taming Crude Behavior: Mixing Strategy With Anionic/Non-ionic Additives to Solve Tough HSE, Productivity Challenges for Penn Energy’s September 2014 online feature section, and Incorporative Production Additives for Upstream Pumping January/February 2015 print edition, notes, “The oil industry is being pressured as never before from both HSE-driven regulatory and profit perspectives. And although production and flow stream technology has dramatically improved, there are still many areas in which speed and efficiency are being hampered because additive technology just hasn’t kept up. This new class of chemicals is changing all that, and taking additives into the 21^st Century.”

Muñoz says the most notable and beneficial feature of his company’s new additives is that they do not evaporate. Their composition, he explains, allows them to incorporate into the crude oil mass, assuming its properties while performing the function for which they have been engineered, even as the temperature and pressure of the crude oil declines. “They stay with the crude and continue to work all the way to the refinery,” Muñoz explains.

Unlike hexane-based solvents, polymers and organic chemicals, the new incorporative additives do not require re-heating or increased pressure in the flow stream. They effectively reduce drag and turbulence, and are added only once in very small dosages — 0.1% to 0.5% by volume treated as compared with higher dosages of 10% to 20% by volume treated for traditional hexane solvents, polymers and organic chemicals. The OilFlux™ additives’ components are recovered separately at their corresponding evaporation point in the distillated fraction at the refinery.

In addition, since the new additives incorporate into the crude oil mass, Muñoz says they do not represent a separate environmental threat apart from the crude oil itself, as hexanes, polymers and organic chemicals do. OilFlux™ additive products, he says, are non-residual contaminants, and while they are not considered bio-degradable, the additives are not harmful to humans or the environment if they are handled in accordance with practices defined in their MSDS sheets.

Although Muñoz acknowledges there may be resistance to switching from traditional non-incorporative production additives, he notes that the availability of fresh test data on his company’s website (www.oilfluxamericas.com), coupled with the fact that it takes much less of the product to achieve the same result, may be enough to convince many oil industry professionals that adoption is a relatively low risk – with potential for high reward.

“The industry is beginning to recognize that the crude oil already in the production lines is cheaper than the crude oil which hasn’t been extracted yet,” Muñoz explains. “Choosing the right additive, one that has a lower overall cost of use and lower environmental risk, is a way for oilfield professionals to ensure that they’re getting it all – because every drop counts.”

About Oil Flux Americas, LLC

Oil Flux Americas LLC provides customers with specialty oilfield chemical additive products that eliminate the 15 profit-robbing crude oil production and flow stream bottlenecks. OilFlux™ additives work speedily and safely, improving clients’ economic performance while reducing ecological impact and health, safety and environmental risk. For technical specifications and test data, visit www.oilfluxamericas.com, call (713) 999-4700, or e-mail info@oilfluxamericas.com.