With mounting pressure to extract petroleum from oil sands and other unconventional sources, oil refineries must adapt their processing methods to handle increasingly heavy crude oils. Unlike traditional crude oils, the properties of heavier crude oils include higher viscosity, metal, salt, and acid content. This causes their interfacial properties to deteriorate, leading to problems such as sedimentation, foaming, emulsification, rust, and corrosion all of which make the manufacture, transportation, and storage of petroleum products more difficult.

Interfacial Properties of Petroleum...