Evaluation of silane-based surfactant nanohybrid as flow improver in a Malaysian light crude oil

Paraffin deposition in the crude oil production pipeline has been an alarming problem to the flow assurance community. This phenomenon causes a tremendous amount of material loss in the production and substantial resources are expended to resolve these flow assurance problems—which included the chem...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Z. H., Lim, H. S., Al Salim, B., Hasiholan, N., Ridzuan
Format: Conference or Workshop Item
Language:English
Published: Institute of Physics Publishing 2019
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Online Access:http://umpir.ump.edu.my/id/eprint/24546/1/Evaluation%20of%20silane-based%20surfactant%20nanohybrid%20as%20flow%20improver%20in%20a%20Malaysian%20light%20crude%20oil.pdf
http://umpir.ump.edu.my/id/eprint/24546/
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1757-899X/469/1/012001/meta
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Summary:Paraffin deposition in the crude oil production pipeline has been an alarming problem to the flow assurance community. This phenomenon causes a tremendous amount of material loss in the production and substantial resources are expended to resolve these flow assurance problems—which included the chemical treatment. This study examined an agricultural non-ionic silane-based surfactant and its blends (with silica nanoparticles) as a flow improver using Malaysian light crude oil (42.4°API). In particular, this study performed the following experimental measurements: wax appearance temperature, pour point, viscosity, and FTIR spectroscopic analysis. The result showed that the surfactant-nanoparticles blend affected the viscosity (significant reduction by approximately 67 %) within certain temperature range and were able to depress both pour point (to 4°C) and wax appearance temperature (15.6°C). It was also revealed that the most potent blend consisted 400 ppm of silane-based surfactant and 200 ppm of SiO2 nanoparticles. The study also evaluated the underlying mechanisms for the variation of viscosity through FTIR spectroscopic analysis.