The action mechanism of wax inhibitors (WI) on pour point and viscosity of mixed waxy oil

Abstract

Several methods had been used to minimize the problems caused by wax deposition in crude oil pipelines during the production and transportation of waxy crude oil; among them, the continuous addition of wax inhibitor (Abbreviation for WI) is considered as the most efficient one. This study uses two kinds of polymeric compounds as wax inhibitors with different solvents on the pour point and viscosity of mixed waxy oils evaluated. These four wax inhibitors defined as WI-1, WI-2, WI-3, WI-4, respectively. Five types of mixed waxy oil have the same wax content but different resin contents. Meanwhile, different resin contents affect the pour point and viscosity of mixed oils. Under different processing temperature, the viscosity of mixed oil measured when the temperature changes among 20 to 60°С. In this work, the results were that the effect of WI-1 and WI-3 relied on the resin content, processing temperature and dosing concentration. For mixed waxy oils, the pour point reductions contacted with dosing concentration and the resin content. The wax inhibitor shows good efficiency when the resin content was between 1.01 and 4.03 wt %. When the WI-1 added, the pour point of mixed oil-1 reduced 30°С at most and viscosity of mixed waxy oil greatly reduced. In sum, toluene as solvent shows better performance of wax inhibitors.