MOLECULAR SIMULATION ON DEPOSITION OF WAX AND ASPHALTENE INHIBITED BY COMBTYPE COPOLYMERS IN PIPELINE

摘要

High content of wax or asphaltene in crude oil usually leads tonhigh viscosity. Long chain alkyl molecules (such as C18) in crude oilnform a plate-like orthorhombic1 or hexagonal crystal2 by selfassembly,nwhich will finally resemble into a “house-of-card”3nmesoscopic crystal structure. In order to solve the problem, pournpoint depressants (PPDs) are widely used as a high-efficiencynapproach to reduce the viscosity in crude oil exploitation4 and longdistancentransportation5. Researchers developed series of PPDs tonprohibit the formation of paraffin crystallization6,7. However, thenefficiency is affected by many factors and the self-assemblynbehavior, interactions, and adsorption energy could hardly benacquired by experiments or characterization, while the latestncomputer simulation technology works.