Improving the Flowability of Waxy Crude Oil Using Orange Seed Oil Derived Additive

Abstract

Abstract The field development of deep offshore and onshore platforms has proven to be extremely expensive hence the necessity of painstaking decision making while checking for the feasibility of various field development plans. The guarantee of waxy crude oil production has proven to be a major problem during the pipeline transport of produced hydrocarbon from the production platforms to the storage plants. Billions of dollars are spent to control the deposition of paraffin in pipe network. The major factor causing wax deposition includes temperature, pour point of the crude oil sample and most importantly the paraffin content of the crude oil sample amongst other factors. It has been proven over the years that the chemical method of controlling wax deposition is the most efficient for wax deposition control as it tackles the root cause of the wax formation and restricts it. However, as efficient as the chemical methods, a great number of chemists mostly utilize certain conventional chemicals rather than others which include Triethanolamine (TEA) and xylene which have proven to be highly priced and usually not environmentally friendly. Various research has been carried out in the hunt for other substitute chemicals for the control of wax formation. Reports have shown that the use of seed oil has been the leading research in wax formation control and deposition. In this study, the seed oils generated from orange seed were converted to biodiesels by a process termed transesterification as there is a significant need to reduce the seed oil viscosity because lower viscous phase greatly improve flow when mix with the waxy crude oil. The study demonstrated that biodiesel made from orange seed oil has the ability to slow wax formation and deposition by lowering the cloud point and pour point in the waxy hydrocarbon.