Study on the prediction method of thixotropy of water-in-oil waxy crude oil emulsions

The thixotropy of water-in-waxy crude emulsion is the basic data used for flow safety studies of oil-water mixed pipelines. This work studied the shearing rate of a water-in-waxy crude oil emulsion under constant shear stress loading conditions. A relative shear rate was defined. A prediction method was developed to estimate the thixotropy of a waxy crude oil emulsion under constant shear stress loading conditions. The method only requires the thixotropy data of 3 water content emulsions and dehydrated crude oil, it can estimate the thixotropic characteristics of the oil-water-waxy crude oil emulsion of any volume of water content.