Experimental Study of Paraffin Wax Precipitation and Its Effect on Corrosion Behavior of Carbon Steel Pipeline

Paraffin wax is a nuisance to flow assurance in transportation pipelines as it tends to precipitate at the pipeline wall which causes interruption to the flow assurance. Moreover, CO2 corrosion can cause damage in the pipeline material by deteriorating the pipelines material. There is not much research work that studies the relationship between paraffin wax precipitation and corrosion behavior. Though paraffin wax restricts the flow in the pipeline, it acts as a corrosion inhibitor by covering the inner wall of pipeline. The objective of this study is to improve the technique of paraffin wax precipitation on carbon steel sample by using modified Cold Spot test via laboratory experiments and also to investigate the effects of paraffin wax precipitation on carbon steel relative to the corrosion behavior of the carbon steel material. The principle of modified Cold Spot test is it allows wax precipitation on the X65 carbon steel sample when there is a temperature differential between paraffin mixture and carbon steel sample. Due to the fact that various other impurities exist in the crude oil, the synthetic mixture is used.