With the development of oil industry, hypercoagulable and high- viscosity crude oils increasing their proportion in total oil production capacity. Heated oil transportation is generally used home and abroad when it comes to this kind of crude oil, Heated oil transportation can be divided into direct heated oil transportation and indirect heated oil transportation. The former is transported by furnacing or mixed hydrothermal with wellhead gas and water, and the latter is transported accompanied by hot water, steam, skin effect and other heating methods. Moreover, all oilfields need to go through water cut development period, especially the oil fields with fast rate oil production and strong water injection, Anhydrous oil production periods are generally shorter, water breakthrough of oil wells is earlier and water content of crude oil is growing faster. Water content in crude oil not only increases the load of storage, transportation, refinery and other equipment, but increases the fuel consumption when the temperature heats up, even causing the fouling or corrosion of equipment and pipes because of salt-containing water. Therefore, water content in crude oil is only a bad thing. But during the oilfield development process, water almost is “forever associated” with crude oil, in the middle and late period of oilfield development, there will be no oil if oil well can not collect water. So crude oil dehydration plays an important role in the process of oilfield development and always attracts more attention, wherein, there is a simple and easy way to conduct, that is sedimentation separation dehydration. Using the principle of water heavy oil light, when the crude oil goes through a specific device, make the water sink, and separate the water from oil, which is the basic dehydration process of crude oil.
In oil fields of northern Shaanxi, it is common to use the coal fire to settle separation and dehydration. Compared with the traditional way, use of electric heat tracing device is more safe and reliable, energy saving and easy to control. This device provides constant heat reservoir of crude oil by converting electrical energy into heat, once adopted, avoiding transportation delay for weather problems and ensure the smooth production. At the same time, electric heat tracing device also avoid explosion, burning and other security risks to greatly improve the protection level of production safety of oil well and life safety of employees.