Modeling of Multiphase Wax Deposition

The environmental conditions typically encountered in deepwater petroleum operations lead to a number of production problems. The cold environment promotes particle formation and deposition of paraffinic compounds in a waxy crude system. These solids can build up inside flowlines and significantly decrease production rates. The wax deposition scale-up technique used for single phase has been applied to multiphase flow conditions. The resulting semi-empirical model is used to simulate multiphase transport of waxy crude oil through integration with a commercial steady-state pipeline simulation package. The wax model is a semi-empirical representation of the wax deposition phenomena. The model incorporates the effects of diffusion and shear through the wax deposition tendency. The key parameters are first measured in a laboratory flow loop.