A new method for the determination of wax precipitation from non-diluted crude oils by fractional precipitation

Wax precipitation is one of the most important flow assurance problems. Unfortunately, experimental data are very scarce to confirm existing models for prediction of such precipitation problem. This work reports a new experimental method. Multistage fractional wax precipitation was carried out by decreasing the temperature of crude oil. No solvent dilution was used, so the effect of solvent on temperature wax precipitation was avoided. The reproducibility of the method was tested with comparable results. The precipitation curve and the wax appearance temperature were obtained for two crude oils with different chemical nature using the reported method. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.