Wax deposition in crude oils: a new approach

Fasano, Antonio ; Primicerio, Mario

Atti della Accademia nazionale dei Lincei. Rendiconti Lincei. Matematica e applicazioni, Série 9, Tome 16 (2005) no. 4, pp. 251-263

Résumé

The complex phenomenon of solid wax deposition in wax saturated crude oils subject to thermal gradients has been treated in a number of papers under very specific assumptions (e.g. thermodynamical equilibrium between dissolved wax and the wax suspended in the oil as a crystallized phase). Here we want to consider a more general framework in which thermodynamical equilibrium may not exist, the whole system may form a gel-like structure in which the segregated solid wax has no diffusivity, the thermal field may evolve due to a non-negligible difference between the thermal conductivity of the solid wax deposit growing at the cold wall of the container and the conductivity of oil, etc.