Wax Deposition Modeling of Oil-Water Flows Using CFD

Wax deposition in subsea oil pipelines is a significant economic problem in the oil and gas industry.  The deposition of wax particulates on the pipe wall can block the pipe and cause significant losses in oil production.  Thus, it is necessary to accurately predict wax deposition possibility in oil transport pipelines.  Wax deposition involves multiphase flow undergoing mass and heat transfer.  In this work, we model wax deposition by solving transient Navier-Stokes equations in a non-isothermal oil-water flow in pipelines.  Wax gel is modeled a porous media, where the velocity and pressure drop are calculated from combined Darcy and Navier-Stokes equations.  Numerical results are compared to published experimental work.