The blending effect of Sumatran crude oil on wax deposition through flow assurance simulation

Crude oil processing requires an oil refinery with massive investment. The Crude oil blending process in an existing refinery is a common process to overcome this problem. One of Indonesia's oil and gas producer is planning to blend crude heavy and light oil in an oil production facility located in Sumatra. It is anticipated that the oil mixture would encounter transportation problems due to the existence of wax deposition, resulting in a flow assurance problem. This research is conducted to examine the wax deposition as the effect of blending 24.1 °API heavy crude and 41.1 °API light crude oil with 15% and 0.121% of wax content. This research also takes two main experiment variables, the blending ratio and initial temperature. The effect of the heater addition and its operating temperature were also examined. This study used a dynamic multi-phase flow software, OLGA v.2017.2.0, to obtain a wax deposition profile. The blending ratio of light oil and heavy oil varies 7:1, 5:1, 3:1; 1:1, 1:3, 1:5, and 1:7, each samples was examined in both ambient and heated conditions. The heater was set at 45°C and ambient temperature at 26°C. The heating temperature was variated at 35°C, 40°C, 50°C, and 55°C with a blending ratio fixed to 1:1. Results showed that with higher light crude oil ratios, the addition of a heater, and higher heater temperatures resulted in lowering the number of waxes that appeared. All variations of the operating parameters show a significant effect on the wax deposition on the pipeline.