Some New Results on the Flow of Waxy Crude Oils in a Loop

Abstract

It is well known that the presence of paraffin in a crude oil can create difficulties in storage, extraction, pumping and all classical operations in a pipeline system. Oils with high content of paraffin are usually called Waxy Crude Oils (WCO’s). One of the most important problem occurring in WCO’s, for low temperatures, is the formation of paraffin deposits on pipeline walls. This is a very complex mechanism for which many models have been proposed ([1], [2], [3] [4], [5], [6]). On the basis of available experimental results we propose here a physical-mathematical isothermal model for the deposition of paraffin on the walls of a cylindrical circular pipe of radius R,like the ones used in experimental laboratory, usually called loops.