Experimental study of water-in-oil emulsion flow on wax deposition in subsea pipelines
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2019
Authors
Adeyanju, Olusiji
Oyekunle, Layioye
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Elsevier
Abstract
Experiments were performed to simulate the deposition of wax in the flow of crude oil emulsions in subsea
pipeline using a validated flow facility. Two crude samples and their respective formation water from two oil
fields in southern Nigeria were used to synthetize two different emulsified crude oil samples (A and B). The
trapping of the water globules in the wax deposits dominates the wax deposition rate initially but later the shear
removal and the molecular diffusion dominate leading to decrease in the wax deposition rate. As the water (BS&
W) composition in the emulsion increases from 10 to 40%, the pour point temperature (PPT) increases from 30
to 41 °C, and the viscosity increases from 40 mPas to 142 mPa at a crude oil temperature of 26 °C. The addition of
45 ppm of long chain acrylate ester co-polymer as pour point depressant depressed the dimensionless wax
thickness by 37.5% and 34.3% for the blank emulsified crude oil A and B respectively. The effect of the commercial
demulsifier to reduce the wax deposition rate was more successful in crude oil A reducing the wax
dimensionless thickness by 58.9% and 43.0% when mixture of 25 ppm of the demulsifier and 45 ppm of long
chain acrylate ester co-polymer were added to blank emulsified crude oil A and B respectively. The used demulsifier
is more effective in crude oil A compared to crude oil B. Efforts should be made to study the effectiveness
of different demulsifiers on each emulsified crude oil before their application for water separation.
Description
Keywords
Demulsifier Average absolute deviations Pour point depressants Validated flow facility Dispersed water globules
Citation
Adeyanju, O.A. and Oyekunle, L. O. (2019)” Experimental Study oWater-in-Oil Emulsion Flow on Wax Deposition in Subsea Pipelines” Petroleum Science and Engineering. 182 (2019) 106294.