Eulerian Model To Predict Asphaltene Deposition Process in Turbulent Oil Transport Pipelines

Abstract

In this paper, Eulerian approach was applied to model asphaltene deposition process in turbulent production pipeline. In addition to common mechanisms like drag, lift, gravity and molecular diffusion the most effective deposition mechanisms such as eddy diffusion, turbophoresis and thermophoresis were considered over a wide range of asphaltene particle size (i.e. 1 nm-100 μm). Modeling results showed that for small submicron particles (<1 μm) diffusion mechanism (including molecular and eddy diffusions) plays significant role however for large particles, due to inertia effect, eddy diffusion and turbophoresis were the dominate mechanisms. It was also found that temperature gradient has no significant effect on asphaltene particle deposition. In the modeling, the effect of oil velocity, surface roughness, particles size and surface temperature on asphaltene deposition was also investigated. The results showed that asphaltene deposition velocity was increased with increasing oil flow velocity, while increas...