GEANT4 simulation of water volume fraction measurement in dehydrated crude oil

Online measurement of water volume fraction (WVF) in dehydrated crude oil is a difficult task due to very little water in dehydrated crude oil and high precision requirements. We presents a method to measure water volume fraction in dehydrated crude oil with γ-ray densitometry. The Monte Carlo computer simulation packet GEANT4 was used to analyze the WVF measuring sensitivity of the γ-ray densitometry at different γ-ray energies, and effects of temperature, pressure, salinity and oil components on WVF measurement. The results show that the γ-ray densitometry has high sensitivity in γ-ray energy ranges of 16-25keV, and it can distinguish WVF changes of 0.0005. The calculated WVF decreases about 0.0002 with 1 degree C of temperature increase and they have approximately linear relation with temperature when water volume fraction remains the same. Effects of pressure, salinity and oil components on water volume fraction can be neglected. Experiments were done to analyze sensitivity of the γ-ray densitometry. The results, as compared with simulations, demonstrate that simulation method is reliable and it is feasible to gauge low water volume fraction using low energy γ-rays. (authors)