The influence of the heating temperature on the yield stress and pour point of waxy crude oils

The yield stress and pour point are two important parameters related to flow assurance problems in waxy crude oil pipelines. The yield stresses at temperatures below the pour points of five waxy crude oils after heating to different temperatures have been investigated in the present paper. Both the experimental results in this work and data from the literature show that the yield stress values increase exponentially with the decreasing measurement temperature. The experimental results show that the heating temperature has an obvious influence on the yield stress and the pour point. However, it was noted that the yield stress values at the gel point temperature, defined as the highest temperature at which the movement of the sample cannot be observed during the quiescent pour point testing process, are approximately the same for a waxy crude oil after heating to different temperatures. An exponential relationship exists between the yield stress and the difference between the measurement temperature and gel point that is independent of the heating temperature. To explore this phenomenon, the relative magnitudes of the gravitational stress and the structural strength of the wax crystal network during the gel point test has been analyzed, and it was found that the yield stress value at the gel point has a favorable linear relationship with the oil density. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.