Paraffin wax deposition is found practically whenever
hydrocarbon, like in crude oils, is produced and transported
causing obstruction to the flow of oil in the pipelines, lowering
the production, and needs higher pumping power. The wax
deposition, sometimes, blocks the pipe entirely, and restarting
operation to initiate the flow is needed. This paper presents
preliminary modeling of ‘hot oiling method’ to restart the flow in
the waxy blocked pipeline. The rheological behavior of field
sample waxy crude oils was carried out by experimental
measurements to correlate the viscosity behavior verses
temperature and shear rate. The experimental results indicated
that viscosity depends heavily on temperature. The transition
temperature of the tested crude was 40oC. At high temperatures
(>40oC), the rheological properties of waxy crude behave as
Newtonian fluid. Hence, the shear rate has less effect on viscosity.
On the other hand, at lower temperatures (<40oC), the shear rate
has a larger effect on the waxy crude and this portrays the non-
Newtonian behavior. The selected case study is for a pipeline
subjected to ambient temperature of 29oC, upstream and
downstream pumping pressure of 10000 kPa and 500 kPa,
respectively, with a steady discharge of 288 kBbl/day. The model
was solved numerically, where iteration is required to predict the
friction factor, the pressure and temperature distributions and
the velocity profile.