Prediction of the viscosity of water-in-oil emulsions

Water-in-oil (W/O) emulsions occur in different parts of petroleum recovery and since their properties are different from those of crude oil and water, it is essential to find information about their physical properties. The water causes some problems and heightens the cost of oil production. Separation of water from oil, water treatment, and disposal of water are the steps that make oil production costly. Among various physical properties of W/O emulsions, viscosity is the most important. Because of droplet crowding, emulsions indicate non-Newtonian behavior, which is why their viscosity is higher than the viscosity of oil and water. As a result, it is essential to have knowledge about the viscosity of W/O emulsions in order to extract and process petroleum properly. In this study, an intelligent model, namely a COA-LSSVM, is presented to accurately prognosticate the viscosity of W/O emulsions. The results indicated that the values estimated by the developed model is in great consistency with the laboratory data by R2 of 0.9972 and MSE of 1.1762 * 10−5. A comparison with another model, which was recently introduced, revealed that the developed model in this study is superior.