Microscope analysis and evaluation of the destabilization process of water-in-oil emulsions under application of electric field

This work analyzes the stability of water-in-oil emulsions with electric field applied, which is of practical use, but still needs to be understood regarding how to define the optimal electric field to maximize the separation of water from oil. Model emulsions with water contents between 15 and 25 wt% are used throughout the experiments. In this paper, visual monitoring is performed with a microscope with electric field applied. Microscopic analysis in conjunction with the measured current, the stability of the emulsions, as a function of the applied electric field, is evaluated. In addition, the use of wavelet transform is proposed, which allows for a more precise identification of the electric field that leads to flocculation, which reverses the separation process. The current signal spectrogram obtained from the wavelet transform makes it possible to correctly differentiate the critical electric field for optimal separation.