Abstract
When oil and gas are produced from wells drilled in deep water environments, the fluids undergo rapid temperature reductions as a result of heat transfer to the surrounding cold water. Typical sea floor temperatures in 2,000-m water depths are often about 5 °C. When the oil temperature near the pipe wall cools below the cloud point or wax appearance temperature, deposition of paraffin on the pipe wall begins. Predicting the phenomena of paraffin deposition requires combining computations for heat transfer, phase equilibrium thermodynamics, fluid dynamics and deposition mechanisms, some of which are not well understood for either single phase or multiphase flow conditions. Once started, paraffin deposition can continue until significant reductions occur in the pipe cross-sectional area available for flow, sometimes resulting in total blockage.
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Brill, J.P. (1998). Paraffin Deposition Phenomena in Crude Oil Pipelines. In: Ramkissoon, H. (eds) IUTAM Symposium on Lubricated Transport of Viscous Materials. Fluid Mechanics and its Applications, vol 43. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5248-8_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5248-8_4
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
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