CRITICAL DESCRIPTORS FOR HYDRATE PROPERTIES OF OILS: COMPOSITIONAL FEATURES

In petroleum production systems, hydrate morphology is observed to be influenced by the crude oil composition. This work is aimed at identifying which crude oil compositional parameters that need to be determined in order to evaluate natural anti-agglomerating properties of crude oils, i.e. the critical compositional descriptors. The compositional features of 22 crude oils have been studied, and multivariate data analysis has been used to investigate the possibility for correlations between several crude oil properties. The results show that biodegradation together with a relatively large amount of acids are characteristic for non-plugging crude oils, while excess of basic compounds is characteristic for plugging crude oils. The multivariate data analysis shows a division of the nonbiodegraded oils, which are all plugging, and the biodegraded oils. In addition, the biodegraded oils seem to be divided into two groups, one with plugging oils and one with mostly non-plugging oils. The results show that the wettability can be predicted from the variables biodegradation level, density, asphaltene content and TAN.Non UBCUnreviewe