Heavy-organic particle deposition from petroleum fluid flow in oil wells and pipelines

Abstract

Suspended asphaltenic heavy organic particles in petroleum fluids may stick to the inner walls of oil wells and pipelines. This is the major reason for fouling and arterial blockage in the petroleum industry. This report is devoted to study the mechanism of migration of suspended heavy organic particles towards the walls in oil-producing wells and pipelines. In this report we present a detailed analytical model for the heavy organics suspended particles deposition coefficient corresponding to petroleum fluids flow production conditions in oil wells. We predict the rate of particle deposition during various turbulent flow regimes. The turbulent boundary layer theory and the concepts of mass transfer are utilized to model and calculate the particle deposition rates on the walls of flowing conduits. The developed model accounts for the eddy diffusivity, and Brownian diffusivity as well as for inertial effects.

The analysis presented in this paper shows that rates of particle deposition (during petroleum fluids production) on the walls of the flowing channel due solely to diffusional effects are small. It is also shown that deposition rates decrease with increasing particle size. However, when the process is momentum controlled (large particle sizes) higher deposition rates are expected.