Research and development of viscosity reducer for oil well production fluid in cold transportation

Abstract

In view of the situation that heavy oil well production fluid needs to be gathered and transferred by heating or with heat water to ensure the normal operation, a kind of cold transportation viscosity reducer was developed through the compounding of different types of surfactants and the screening of functional additives, which adapt to the oil well produced fluid without heating or watering gathering process, for saving energy, reducing consumption and increasing efficiency, while meeting the environmental needs. After on-site practical applications of 30 pipelines with different physical properties of crude oil, the average pressure of gathering pipelines dropped 1.3 Mpa, which has achieved good results. Application results show that the cold transportation viscosity reducer has strong adaptability and less usage, and it has no influence on demulsification, while having a high value of applications and a broad market prospect.