Effect of SiO2 nanoparticles on wax formation, morphology, and rheological behavior in crude oil:An experimental study

Oil extracted from the underground oil reservoirs contains heavy hydrocarbons.Heavy hydrocarbons include waxes,asphalts and resins that can appear as solids in compounds,which waxes are of particular importance.Changes in factors such as temperature,pressure,compounds of light components in petroleum compounds,etc.Cause the formation of solid paraffin wax deposits in these compounds.The wax precipitate formed mainly contains paraffins,naphthenes and to a lesser extent aromatics.The formation of these sediments in the first stage can block the underground pores, reduce their permeability and reduce the efficiency of oil extraction.In the next stages,the formation of deposits will lead to many problems. For example,it can clog pipes and increase flow resistance, resulting in a drop in flow pressure and,in addition to increasing the power required to pump fluid, cause premature depreciation of the facility.The issue of wax sediment formation and the factors affecting it have been discussed by researchers for many years and different methods have been studied to control it.In this project,by examining 1 nanoparticle of SiO2,as chemical inhibitor, acceptable results were obtained in reducing the wax appearance temperature(WAT).First,using differential scanning calorimetry analysis,a temperature of 250C was obtained for the crude oil cloud point.Then,by adding nanoparticles in different concentrations,this temperature was significantly reduced for different amounts of nanoparticles.Analysis of polarized optical microscopy also shows the change in structure of wax crystals to a disk like after the addition of nanoparticles. To investigate the flow behavior of crude oil,the apparent viscosity parameter was used at shear rates of 0.01,0.1 and 1 rpm and higher and lower temperatures of WAT temperature.Then,using wax deposition of oil samples by two analyzes of X-ray diffraction(XRD) and scanning electron microscopy(FESEM) with EDAX additive to study the dispersion of nanoparticles in wax deposits and changes resulting from the addition of nanoparticles in depositions was paid.In this regard,according to X-ray diffraction analysis,it was found that the nanoparticles had no chemical interaction with wax molecules,but was a confirmation of the results obtained in the analysis of differential scanning calorimetric analysis.The layered structure of the wax precipitate by adding nanoparticles to a fine-grained structure was also one of the results of scanning electron microscopy analysis.