Oil & Gas

What the research shows for produced water and heavy crude.

Produced water, heavy crude and biofilm: what published research reports when ultrafine bubbles go inline, and the hardware we build behind those mechanisms. Nothing on this page is our own field measurement.

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Up to -40%
Heavy-Crude Viscosity
(Reported Range 33–84% · Published Research)
99%
Oil–Water Separation
(Residual Oil < 4 mg/L · Published Research)
+17.6%
Oil Recovery, Sweep Efficiency
(CO₂/N₂ Bubbles · Published Research)
The Problem

Heavy crude, dirty water, costly chemistry

Produced water is expensive to treat. Heavy crude won't flow without heat or chemicals. Biofilm clogs your pipes and forces shutdowns. Every workaround adds cost, complexity, and compliance risk.

The Solution

One inline platform, three published mechanisms

In published trials, hydrodynamic cavitation and ultrafine bubbles cut heavy-crude viscosity by up to 40% (reported range 33–84%), separated crude from produced water at 99% efficiency down to under 4 mg/L residual, and oxidized the sulfate-reducing bacteria that build pipe-clogging biofilm. Kairospace has no oil and gas installations and nothing measured in the application — we build the inline hardware behind those mechanisms.

Key benefits

Cleaner produced water, lower cost

In published trials, ultrafine bubble flotation separated crude at 99% efficiency, leaving under 4 mg/L residual — with less of the chemical dosing, sludge disposal and maintenance that conventional treatment carries.

More oil from every well

Peer-reviewed trials report heavy-crude viscosity cut by up to 40% (range 33–84%), improving flow without costly heating. The mechanism applies in both downhole EOR and surface processing.

Attack biofilm, avoid shutdowns

In published work, ozone ultrafine bubbles oxidize sulfate-reducing bacteria and the biofilm they build — the mechanism behind lower corrosion risk and less unplanned downtime. No kill rate is quoted here because none of the work on this page measured one.

See the hardware. Installed at a tank battery.

Kairospace injectors, control and metering panels tied into surface water handling at a tank battery. These are our own frames of our own equipment — and they are water-handling kit at the surface, not an oil and gas production installation. Every figure on this page is published research.

Operator adjusting a control panel beside the injection line at a tank battery, with a pump skid in the foreground
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Setting the injection rate at the control panel

Get in Touch

What would less chemistry and more uptime mean for your bottom line?

Tell us about your operation — produced water volumes, crude type, and current treatment costs. We'll send your project proposal in 48 hours.

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Research & hardware

What the research says, and what we build

Each problem below is paired with the published work on it and with the hardware that puts the mechanism in your line. Figures are other people's trials unless marked KST field data.

Figures below are from independent, peer-reviewed studies unless marked KST field data.

Problem: Heavy crude is too expensive to move
The Problem: Heavy crude requires costly heating or dilution with lighter oil just to flow through pipelines. Long-chain hydrocarbons create high frictional resistance that eats into your margins.
What We Do: Hydrodynamic cavitation generates intense local energy that cracks heavy molecular chains. Published trials report viscosity reductions of 33–84% and a modest rise in API gravity.
Askarian et al., 2017 Wan et al., 2019
Problem: You're leaving oil behind in the reservoir
The Problem: Conventional water or gas flooding creates channels that bypass oil trapped in tight micropores. The result: you're extracting a fraction of what's actually there.
What We Do: In published work, CO₂ and N₂ ultrafine bubbles prevent gas channeling and penetrate low-permeability layers that standard injection misses. This improves sweep efficiency, increasing oil recovery by 17.6%.
Cai et al., 2024 Elnaggar et al., 2025
Problem: Produced water won't separate
The Problem: Tiny emulsified oil droplets (<20 μm) are extremely difficult to separate from saline produced water — especially on offshore platforms where space is limited.
What We Do: In published trials, ultrafine bubble flotation separated crude oil at 99% efficiency (residual content <4 mg/L), outperforming the microbubble systems in the same work — in a fraction of the space.
Oliveira et al., 2017 Shen et al., 2022
Problem: Hydrocarbon-contaminated sands and soil
The Problem: Spills leave sticky hydrocarbon contamination on shorelines and in soil. Standard biological or chemical methods struggle to fully detach oil from sand grains.
What We Do: In published work, self-collapsing ultrafine bubbles removed nearly all of the oil from contaminated sands and detached most of the total petroleum hydrocarbons from contaminated soil.
Agarwal et al., 2016 Sun et al., 2019 Chen et al., 2023
Problem: Asphaltenes are choking your reservoir
The Problem: Asphaltene deposits clog reservoir pores and pipelines, reducing permeability and shifting rock surfaces to oil-wet states that kill production flow.
What We Do: In published work, ultrafine bubbles act as carriers for nano-inhibitors, significantly delaying asphaltene precipitation. Micromodel work on nano-inhibitors shows improved oil recovery.
Shadervan et al., 2024 Pourkarimi et al., 2021
Problem: Sulfur corrosion is damaging your equipment
The Problem: Sulfur impurities cause equipment corrosion and coking. Conventional purification for heavy oil fractions is complex, slow, and expensive.
What We Do: In published work, cavitation-assisted oxidative desulfurization selectively targets sulfur bonds, lowering the sulfur content of a heavy fuel oil measurably — the mechanism behind less corrosion and a better product. Kuimov & Minkin, 2021