Application of a phenomenological model for the prediction of the thickness and position of paraffin deposits of light crude oil in production pipe

Abstract

Paper presented to the 10th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, Florida, 14-16 July 2014.Wax deposition is an important problem in the petroleum industry because it may cause obstruction in well bores, production facilities and transportation pipelines during production. To control or avoid this problem it is necessary to predict the formation of these deposits under different operational conditions. In this work is presented an implementation of a deposition model proposed by Singh et al., (2000) and applied to a highly paraffinic Colombian crude. Solution was carried out using a CFD code and the analysis considers the behavior of operational variables like: flow rate, wall temperature and time of deposition.