Investigation of inhibitors efficacy in wax deposition mitigation using a laboratory scale flow loop

Statistically reliable wax inhibition experimental data was obtained by utilizing the newly built laboratory scale flow loop. The comb-shaped inhibitors are found more effective in decreasing the thickness compared to the linear inhibitor under the same conditions. Moreover, this becomes more predominant as the chain length of inhibitors increases. Interestingly, even though all the inhibitors decreased the deposit thickness, the wax content increased significantly. Besides, the longer chain length (PI-B) of the inhibitor results in a higher wax content. Since the combination of growth and aging influenced by the presence of inhibitor significantly, paraffin inhibition efficiency (PIE) based on the wax mass was proposed to quantitatively assess the inhibitors. Based on the PIE, PI-B, and PI-C have more inhibition efficiency than PI-A. Therefore, when selecting wax inhibitor, one should be aware about the strength of the deposit gel in addition to the reduction of the deposit mass. (c) 2016 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 62: 4131-4139, 2016