Role of surfactants, polymers, nanoparticles, and its combination in inhibition of wax deposition and precipitation: A review

Oil wax deposition and precipitation are becoming a major problem during oil production, transportation, and refining. Deposition mitigation by chemical additives, like polymer and surfactants, are commonly used in the oil industry. Because there is no clarity in wax inhibition mechanisms of the additive with crude type and conditions, chemical wax inhibitors are still used in a trial-and-error manner in the oil fields, which is an expensive and inefficient methodology. Understanding the wax inhibition mechanism is important for the design of new inhibitors. This review aims to give an overview of the understanding and development of nanoparticle technology, surfactants, polymer, and their combination in the inhibition of wax deposition. The review looks into lab and pilot plant experiments reported in the recent literature, with more focus on the fundamentals of nanohybridization approaches in wax deposition control, testing methodologies (i.e., thermal, rheological, and morphological analysis), inhibition performance assessment, and mechanisms. The review begins with an overview of bibliometric analysis to shed light on the emerging areas in that field and also explore and analyze the large volumes of scientific data reported from 2000 to 2022 in this field. The performance parameters used for assessing the wax inhibitors in the laboratory are also summarized and addressed. Finally, the challenges and future remarks of the reported chemical inhibitors are reported in this paper. This review provides insights into the integration of nanomaterials into the existing technologies to overcome the existing challenges.