Analysis of the Structure of Viscous Oil Flow for the Development of a System to Prevent the Formation of Paraffin Deposits in Pipelines

Abstract

The detection of paraffin deposits in the systems of main oil pipelines today is a very important problem, since they lead to emergency oil spills, environmental disasters and economic losses both for the enterprise and for the country as a whole. This work is aimed at studying the physicochemical properties of asphaltic resin paraffins, as well as the mechanism of phase transition from liquid to crystalline. Such studies make it possible to estimate the absorption coefficient of the paraffin phase, which was previously not possible due to the complex nature of oil, consisting of hydrocarbons and many organic compounds of various molecular weights, and to provide high-precision non-contact measurements of the concentration of suspended asphalt-resin-paraffins in the oil flow in the pipeline. The analysis of the morphology and chemical composition of paraffins of various deposits is carried out, the dependence of the phase transition depending on the temperature gradient is determined.