Simulation Studies of Wax Deposition in Oil-Gas Inclined Shafte

Wax deposition in oil–gas two-phase pipe flow can be a significant flow assurance problem. It becomes complicated when gas phase flow is involved. In this work, a program is proposed for the wax deposition for oil-gas inclined well. The simulator is modular in struct multiphase fluid flow, wax-oil-gas thermodynamics, two-phase heat transfer, and paraffin deposition. In the thermodynamic ure and develops for predicting paraffin deposition during oil-gas two phase flow that includes coupling of calculation module, the equation of state (EOS) – the excess Gibbs energy model calculates the wax-oil-gas phase behavior of crude oil and predicts wax appearance temperature (WAT) and the solubility curves. To calculate the thickness and wax content of the wax deposition layer, the molecular diffusion and the aging theory are considered as the primary mechanisms. Predictions of the simulator are compared and tuned to the experimental data by adjusting the film heat transfer and diffusion coefficients. The adjusted simulator is used to predict the detail of wax deposition along the actual well. And then the thorough analysis upon the atypical distribution of wax deposition is carried out.