Abstract—Wax can precipitate as a solid phase on the pipe wall during hydrocarbon production when its temperature (inlet coolant temperature) drops below the Wax Appearance Temperature (WAT) causing an artificial blockage leading to a reduction or interruption in the production. An experimental flow loop system was built in the lab to study the variation of wax deposition thickness under a single phase transport. The effect of the inhibitor W802 (polyacrylate polymer (C16-C22)) on the crude oil viscosity and WAT was studied at different concentrations using a Bohlin Gemini II rheometer. The results show the greatest reduction in oil viscosity was achieved when using 1000ppm of W802 which means a greater reduction in the wax deposition using this inhibitor concentration. A series of experiments were carried out to study wax deposition and measure the wax thickness using four different techniques including pigging, pressure drop, heat transfer, liquid displacement-level detection (LD-LD). The effect of factors on wax formation such as inlet coolant temperature, pressure drop, flow rates, time, and inhibitor has been examined. The results show the wax inhibition percentage (WI%) using inhibitor W802 (polyacrylate polymer (C16-C22)) at flow rate 4.8 L/min was higher at higher inlet coolant temperatures from 40% at 14 ºC, to 57% at 24 ºC and 100% at 33 ºC. This percentage of inhibition will increased rapidly by increasing the inlet coolant temperature.
Index Terms—Waxy crude oil, inhibitor, WAT, Viscosity.
Muhammad Ali Theyab is with London South Bank University, 103 Borough Rd, London SE1 0AA, USA (e-mail: theyabm@lsbu.ac.uk).
Pedro Diaz is with the School of Engineering, London South Bank University, UK (e-mail: diazp2@lsbu.ac.uk).
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Cite: Muhammad Ali Theyab and Pedro Diaz, "Experimental Study of the Effect of Polyacrylate Polymer (C16-C22) on Wax Deposition," International Journal of Chemical Engineering and Applications vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 16-21, 2017.