Effect of geometry of tank on the thermal characteristics of waxy crude oil during its static cooling

Abstract

With the purpose of revealing the inner link between the thermal characteristics and geometry of tank, the physical and mathematical models of waxy crude oil during static cooling process under different geometric sizes are established. Based on the data collected by numerical simulations, it concludes that the influence of geometry on temperature distribution occurred in the whole computational domain. There is a positive correlation between the computational domain temperature and geometric size, and the effect of geometry decrease with the increase of the geometric size. The effect of geometry on gelatinization layer thickness is similar. Based on partial correlation and grey relational analysis, the height has an important impact on proportion of gelled crude oil and transition state crude oil, while the radius has an important impact on proportion of pure liquid crude oil. Moreover, the detailed information of partial correlation coefficient and relevancy between geometry and phase change during the cooling process are obtained.