A Physical Preventive Treatment of Crystallization and Precipitation in the Petroleum Industry

Abstract

The plugging of tubings and pipelines by scale, asphaltene, and wax is a common problem in the oil production, transportation and refinery systems. Hot oiling, chemical wash and mechanical scraping have been used for many years to restore flow. There may be economic benefit to implement preventive treatments. We propose to consider the application of ultrasound as a potential preventive treatment. As a physical treatment, it is expected to be independent of the details of the chemical nature of the problem, i.e., it should be equally applicable to particles such as salt crystals, asphaltene precipitates, or wax. We will present experimental results showing the effects of application of ultrasound during precipitation and crystallization. Three systems were tested in this study; crystallization of salt from saturated aqueous solutions, re-dispersion of asphaltene in heptane, and pour point depression of diesel with different wax contents. The results show that, under the influence of ultrasound during the phase transition, there was a reduction of the size of the salt crystals, precipitated asphaltene was re-dispersed, and the temperature at the pour point of diesel with different wax contents was substantially lowered.

A New Method for Prediction of Water Flooding Development Index

“…a--straight intercept of type C water flooding feature curve b--straight slope of type C water flooding feature curve Exponential Decline Prediction Model [2][3][4], had predicted function of oil production, cumulative oil production and recoverable reserve. And the formula of oil production and time by model declined International Conference on Information Sciences, Machinery, Materials and Energy (ICISMME 2015)…”