POLLUTION caused by extracting oil from wells that are close to running dry could be all but eliminated by some ingenious fluid mechanics.
As an oil well empties, the crude oil extracted from it is increasingly laden with water, often producing a watery gunk that is about nine parts water to one part crude. Much of this oil is in the form of minute droplets that are held in suspension.
To separate this oil, it is necessary to add a chemical cocktail of emulsion breakers and “flocculants”. This disrupts the surface forces on the droplets that maintain the emulsion, allowing…
