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Water-in-oil (W/O) emulsions are very common in the petroleum industry, and their viscosities are the principle parameters for the operation design. Typical correlations composed by one or two factors cannot always fit the apparent viscosity of W/O emulsions very well, especially when applied to the crude oil/water emulsions. The viscosities of W/O emulsions, which were made from three kinds of crude oil, were measured by Anton Paar MCR302 viscometer at atmospheric pressure with different temperatures as well as shear rates. The experiment results indicate that W/O emulsion would exhibit Newtonian characteristic when water content is no higher than 0.2 and non-Newtonian characteristic otherwise. According to the experimental data, a modified correlation based on the Broughton–Squires model and Ronningsen model was introduced to predict the viscosity of W/O emulsions, and the comparison results showed that the new modified correlation has better accuracy than the original models. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]