Effect of the Flow Field on the Wax Deposition and Performance of Wax Inhibitors: Cold Finger and Flow Loop Testing

摘要

Chemical inhibition is one of the methods to mitigate deposition of wax in pipelines; however, the efficiency of the inhibitors needs to be validated in the laboratory prior to field applications. Cold finger, as the most commonly used experimental setup in the field, has quite a different shear regime and temperature field compared to the flow loop and field production pipeline. This paper investigates the flow field (cold finger and flow loop) effect on the wax deposition and the performance of wax inhibitors under the same initial temperature difference and comparable shear stress conditions. The normalized deposit mass, wax content, carbon number distribution, and wax mass flux were investigated in these two different flow fields, and the performance of wax inhibitors was also investigated. Moreover, the results from this study are expected to serve as a basis for selecting proper inhibitors for field applications based on laboratory testing.