Rheological Study of the Crude Oil

The rheological study of the crude oil is very crucial in understanding the performance of the oil to efficiently produce from the reservoir. The rheological properties of the crude oil are measured for the practical importance for their transport properties, and pipeline and pump station design. The main objective of this project is to study the fluid behaviour of the crude oil. The parameters tested in this project are temperature and presence of wax in the crude oil. The two crude oil samples that were used for this study are Dulang Crude Oil and Arab Heavy Oil by using HPHT Viscometer. Newtonian Model and Bingham Model are used to determine the fluid behaviour of the crude oil samples. From the rheological test, only Arab Heavy Oil under the influenced of 40oC is acting like a Newtonian fluid while Arab Heavy Oil with applied temperature of 40oC deviate a little from Newtonian fluid class, acting slightly as a Bingham plastic fluid. On the other hand, Dulang Oil is completely behaving like a Bingham plastic fluid when both temperature of 40oC and 70oC are applied. It was observed that with the presence of wax, the crude oil has high probability to behave like a Bingham plastic fluid. From the experiment, the result also shows that high temperature will reduce the viscosity of the crude oil by a large margin.