Stochastic modeling of asphaltenes deposition and prediction of its influence on friction pressure drop

Abstract

When dealing with heavy and extra-heavy crude oils, petroleum industry faces the deposition and incrustation of solids on pipelines walls during fluids transportation. Such a deposition phenomenon is supposed to be caused by asphaltenes aggregation. In this work, is presented a stochastic model that predicts the behavior of friction pressure drop with respect to asphaltenes concentration and the deposition and detaching velocities through the principles of fractal geometry and differential fractional calculus. Results show that at higher values of asphaltenes total concentration and deposition velocity, the friction pressure losses are also increased, which is an expected behavior because of the thickness and morphology of the asphaltenes deposited layer.

Keywords:

• aggregates deposition
• asphaltenic crude oils
• fractal dimension
• fractional calculus
• friction pressure drop prediction

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interests regarding the publication of this article.

Additional information

Funding

This research was carried out with CONACyT-SENER (project #282278) and PROFOCIE (project #OP/PFCE-2017-28MSU0010B-25-01) support. Author Edgardo. J. Suarez-Dominguez wants to thank PRODEP support and author Ben Xu to the Internationalization Department of the Universidad Autonoma de Tamaulipas.