A New Correlation for Prediction of Wax Disappearance Temperature of Hydrocarbon Mixtures at Various Pressures

Authors

1 Chemical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran

2 Chemical and Petroleum Engineering Department, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

  Wax precipitate is one of the most serious issues the oil industry is currently facing, since it can cause some troubles such as increasing of the pressure losses in pipe which subsequently increases the required power for pumpage. To remove this problem, prediction of wax disappearance temperature (WDT) seems necessary. In this study, the pressure influence on the wax disappearance temperature in multi-component mixtures has been surveyed and some correlations have been proposed to predict the wax disappearance temperature instead of using thermodynamic models. The accuracies of the correlations as AARD are 0.30 %, 0.27 % and 0.68 % for binary, ternary and multi-component mixtures, respectively.

Keywords

References

[1] Esmaeilzadeh, F., Fathi Kaljahi, J. and Ghanaei, E. (2006). “Investigation of different activity coefficient models in thermodynamic modeling of wax precipitation.” Fluid PhaseEquilib., Vol. 248, No. 1, pp. 7-18.
[2] Zuo, J. Y., Zhang, D. D. and Ng, H. J. (2001). “An improved thermodynamic model for wax precipitation from petroleum fluids.” Chem. Eng. Sci., Vol. 56, No. 24, pp. 6941-6947.
[3] Won, K. W. (1986). “Thermodynamics for solid solution-liquid-vapor equilibria: wax phase formation from heavy hydrocarbon mixtures.” Fluid Phase Equilib., Vol. 30, pp. 265-279.
[4] Won, K. W. (1989). “Thermodynamic calculation of cloud point temperatures and wax phase compositions of refined hydrocarbon mixtures.” Fluid Phase Equilib., Vol. 53, pp. 377-396.
[5] Hansen, J. H., Fredenslund, A., Pedersen, K. S. and Ronningsen, H. P. (1988). “A thermodynamic model for predicting wax formation in crude oils.” AIChE J., Vol. 34, No. 12, pp. 1937-1942.
[6] Flory, P. J. (1953). Principles of polymer chemistry. Cornell Univ. Press. Ithaca, New York.
[7] Pedersen, W. B., Hansen, A. B., Larsen, E. and Nielsen, A. B. (1991). “Wax precipitation from North Sea crude oils. 2. Solid-phase content as function of temperature determined by pulsed NMR.” Energy Fuels, Vol. 5, No. 6, pp. 908-913.
[8] Lira-Galeana, C., Firoozabadi, A. and Prausnitz, J. M. (1996). “Thermodynamics of wax precipitation in petroleum mixtures.” AIChE J., Vol. 42, No. 1, pp. 239-248.
[9] Vafaie-Sefti, M., Mousavi-Dehghani, S. A. and Mohammad-Zadeh Bahar, M. (2000). “Modification of multi solid phase model for prediction of wax precipitation: a new and effective solution method.” Fluid Phase Equilib., Vol. 173, No. 1, pp. 65-80.
[10] Robinson, D. B., Peng, D. Y. and Chung, S. Y. K. (1985). “The development of the Peng-Robinson equation and its application to phase equilibrium in a system containing ethanol.” Fluid Phase Equilib., Vol. 24, No. 1-2, pp. 25-41.
[11] Dalirsefat, R. and Feyzi, F. (2007). “A thermodynamic model for wax deposition phenomena.” Fuel, Vol. 86, No. 10-11, pp. 1402-1408.
[12] Feyzi, F., Riazi, M. R., Shaban, H. I. and Ghotbi, S. (1998). “Improving cubic equations of state for heavy reservoir fluids and critical region.” Chem. Eng. Commun., Vol. 167, No. 1, pp. 147-166.
[13] Coutinho, J. A. P. (1998). “Predictive UNIQUAC:􀔜 a new model for the description of multiphase solid-liquid equilibria in complex hydrocarbon mixtures.” Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., Vol. 37, No. 12, pp. 4870-4875.
[14] Abrams, D. S. and Prausnitz, J. M. (1975). “Statistical thermodynamics of liquid mixtures: A new expression for the excess Gibbs energy of partly or completely miscible systems.” AIChE J., Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 116-128.
[15] Coutinho, J. A. P. (2000). “A thermodynamic model for predicting wax formation in jet and diesel fuels.” Energy Fuels, Vol. 14, No. 3, pp. 625-631.
[16] Coutinho, J. A. P., Mirante, F. and Pauly, J. (2006). “A new predictive UNIQUAC for modeling of wax formation in hydrocarbon fluids.” Fluid Phase Equilib., Vol. 247, No. 1-2, pp. 8-17.
[17] Coutinho, J. A. P. and Ruffier-Me´ray, V. (1997). “Experimental measurements and thermodynamic modeling of paraffinic wax formation in undercooled solutions.” Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., Vol. 36, No. 11, pp. 4977-4983.
[18] Bhat, N. V. and Mehrotra, A. K. (2004). “Measurement and prediction of the phase behavior of wax−solvent mixtures:􀔜 significance of the wax disappearance temperature.” Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., Vol. 43, No. 13, pp. 3451-3461.
[19] Coutinho, J. A. P., Andersen, S. I. and Stenby, E. H. (1995). “Evaluation of activity coefficient models in prediction of alkane solid-liquid equilibria.” Fluid Phase Equilib., Vol. 103, No. 1, pp. 23-39.
[20] Coutinho, J. A. P. and Stenby, E. H. (1996). “Predictive local composition models for solid/liquid equilibrium in n-alkane systems:􀔜 Wilson equation for multicomponent systems.” Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., Vol. 35, No. 3, pp. 918-925.
[21] Ji, H.-Y., Tohidi, B., Danesh, A. and Todd, A. C. (2004). “Wax phase equilibria: developing a thermodynamic model using a systematic approach.” Fluid Phase Equilib., Vol. 216, No. 2, pp. 201-217.
[22] Ghanaei, E., Esmaeilzadeh, F. and Kaljahi, J. F. (2007). “A new predictive thermodynamic model in the wax formation phenomena at high pressure condition.” Fluid Phase Equilib., Vol. 254, No. 1-2, pp. 126-137.
[23] Milhet, M., Pauly, J., Coutinho, J. A. P., Dirand, M. and Daridon, J. L. (2005). “Liquid-solid equilibria under high pressure of tetradecane + pentadecane and tetradecane + hexadecane binary systems.” Fluid Phase Equilib., Vol. 235, No. 2, pp. 173-181.
[24] Smith, J. M. and Van Ness, H. C. (2001). Introduction to chemical engineering thermodynamics. 6th. Ed. Chapter 3, McGraw-Hill Pub. Co., New York.
[25] Metivaud, V., Rajabalee, F., Oonk, H. A. J., Mondieig, D. and Haget, Y. (1999). “Complete determination of the solid (RI) - liquid equilibria of four consecutive n-alkane ternary systems in the range C14H30-C21H44 using only binary data.” Can. J. Chem., Vol. 77, No. 3, pp. 332-339.
[26] Daridon, J. L., Pauly, J. and Milhet, M. (2002). “High pressure solid-liquid phase equilibria in synthetic waxes.” Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., Vol. 4, No. 18, pp. 4458-4461.

Files

History

  • Receive Date: 31 January 2012
  • Accept Date: 13 March 2013

Share

How to cite

Statistics