(145b) Wax Deposition Modeling of Oil-Water Flows Using CFD
AIChE Spring Meeting and Global Congress on Process Safety
2016
2016 AIChE Spring Meeting and 12th Global Congress on Process Safety
4th International Conference on Upstream Engineering and Flow Assurance
Waxes in Flow Assurance II
Tuesday, April 12, 2016 - 4:00pm to 4:30pm
Wax deposition in subsea oil pipelines is a significant economic problem in the oil and gas industry. The deposition of wax particulates on the pipe wall can block the pipe and cause significant losses in oil production. Thus, it is necessary to accurately predict wax deposition possibility in oil transport pipelines. Wax deposition involves multiphase flow undergoing mass and heat transfer. In this work, we model wax deposition by solving transient Navier-Stokes equations in a non-isothermal oil-water flow in pipelines. Wax gel is modeled a porous media, where the velocity and pressure drop are calculated from combined Darcy and Navier-Stokes equations. Numerical results are compared to published experimental work.