Evaluation of wax deposition prevention for crude oil production from Mae Soon oil field

Abstract

Waxy crude oils are normally found in petroleum reservoirs. Crude oil with the wax formation is one of the crucial problems for flow assurance of pipeline transportation in oil and gas production. This issue can commonly cause wax deposition problem and it has made a huge amount of economic losses such as production, time and maintenance cost. Therefore, it is a critical aspect to deal with wax deposition for crude oil flow assurance, especially at the surface region in cold climate. In this study, n-heptane and poly (maleic anhydride-alt-1-octadecane) or MA as the inhibitors with different concentrations will be measured the effect on pour point, wax appearance temperature and wax deposition of Mae Soon crude oil and investigated the effects of parameters such as temperature, concentration and types of inhibitors for these aspects.

N-heptane plays a key role in the reduction of pour point, wax appearance temperature and wax deposition of this study. It is also found that the amount of total wax deposits decreases when this chemical concentration increases. Consequently, an increasing concentration provides a better performance for inhibition of wax deposition problems. On the other hand, MA also shows the results for the reduction of wax appearance temperature and wax deposition of Mae soon crude oil. According to the results, it offers low performance for pour point reduction because it cannot be soluble well in the higher wax content of crude oil. After each individual inhibitor are measured for the reduction of pour point, wax appearance temperature and wax deposition, the mixtures of n-heptane and MA are investigated to have better results for wax deposition prevention. It is found that 10% n-heptane and 5000 ppm MA provides the optimal condition for wax deposition prevention based on this study because it can show low wax deposition with less amount of chemical consumption. The results can be used as fundamental data and the investigation can expand into combination with another type of inhibitors.