Experimental and numerical study on the effects of surfactant as drag reducing agent in paraffin wax oil pipeline

This study presents an experimental and simulated approach to investigate the drag-reducing phenomenon of surfactants. The experiments to examine the effects of surfactant as a drag reducing agent (DRA) were conducted using the Fann VG viscometer. The paraffin wax oil samples were treated with different temperatures, surfactant concentrations, and surfactant compositions. We used two discrete surfactant compositions, measured apparent viscosities of paraffin wax oil samples for different conditions, and analyzed the effectiveness of DRA based on apparent viscosity results. To examine the effects of surfactant as DRA, under a pipeline transport situation, we used the results from the experiments for a simulation with assumed field operational data. The simulation results are consistent with experimental data. We have observed that, on paraffin wax oil, pressure loss inside the pipeline is inversely related to surfactant concentration and temperature. We verified, experimentally and numerically, that surfactant can act as DRA and can be a possible solution to pipeline friction-related problems in an oil field. However, with paraffin wax oil, the change of temperature has a greater effect than does change of surfactant concentration or composition.