EVALUATING THE MECHANISMS OF WAX DEPOSITION IN CRUDE OIL PIPELINES

Abstract

Flow assurance standstill as a massive issue as it involves ensuring fluid flows in well, flowline and trunk line. One of the major decisive for flow assurance crude oil is its constitution and solid deposits successful management. Wax deposition challenges and its control can be determined with the right prediction from wax deposition modelling. Certain factors like pipeline inclination that influences the rate of wax deposition need to be taken into consideration. For inclined wells, the model is tuned to account for low concentration slurries under inclined angles. Regarding this, a complete wax deposition model is developed to predict the rate of wax deposition by investigating all the possible wax deposition mechanisms which contribute actively for better wax deposition management in the oil fields. A thorough analysis has been carried out to show the significance of each deposition mechanisms and parameters in wax deposition model like rate of wax deposition, deposit thickness, the temperature in the pipeline, pressure drop in the pipeline. Based on the results achieved, it can be deduced that the shear stripping and rate enhancement effect due to oil trap has the highest contribution towards the wax deposition in the pipeline but the gravity settling velocity cannot be neglected without valid assumptions.Keywords: flow assurance, wax deposition, wax deposition mechanisms, wax deposition modelling, shear stripping, gravity settling velocity