Evaluation of Thixotropic Models of Waxy Crude

Abstract

Thixotropy, which is an important rheological behavior of waxy crudes, is very important to the hydraulic characteristics and safety of the restart process of crude oil pipelines. Thixotropic behaviors of four waxy crudes were studied experimentally under three kinds of loading conditions, which were constant shear rate, stepwise increase of shear rate and cyclic change of shear rate, namely hysteresis loop. Eight thixotropic models were evaluated by least-square regressions based on experimental data. The average absolute deviation was taken as the measurement of fitness of a model. It is concluded that the model, which was established on the basis of Houska model and Cheng’s idea that wax crude oil contains both complete and partial reversibility structures, is the most suitable model to describe the thixotropy of wax crude oil