Wax Deposition – Trend Of Formation In Crude Pipeline

Normally most of crude oils contain wax either in small or large percentage. Wax content in crude oils significantly gives some more cost to the production line, transportation and also process plant. So that it play an important role to the operating cost to any sections of oil industry. Wax deposition usually starts when the crude oils are flowing through pipeline or riser. At sea bed and undersea there are low temperature over there which cause wax component in crude oil start to crystallize and precipitate. It also has high viscosity which can cause pumping problems to pipelines. Over certain period of time wax can cause blockage to the pipeline. This kind of problem potentially increase cost of operation and become severe when the operation is being shut down because of pipeline failure. There is a method to overcome this problem by using circulation of hot oil from platform to well. It purposes is to maintain high temperature of flowing crude oil to storage tank, so there are less percentage of wax deposited on the wall surface of tubing. In UTP, most studies on waxes were conducted using batch system. This study will concentrate on continuous system where coolant is circulated in a cold finger flowing through fix amount of hydrocarbon solution. So there is an interest on how is it the deposition process works. Because the way of deposition occurs is different compared to batch system, the pattern and trend of wax deposition is still a question. This research will start by having literature review and number of sets of experiment to collect data and make analysis of wax deposition in a loop. This preliminary report includes project background, problem statement, objective, project scope and limitation, literature review, methodology and references.