aUniversidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte

The wax appearance temperature (WAT) is the temperature at which the first wax crystals start to form, on cooling of paraffin/solvent systems. There are a number of different WAT determination methods, including: density and viscosity variation, differential scanning calorimetry, laser dispersion, and chromatography. The photoelectric method is used in this work based on the principle that the appearance of wax crystals modifies the transparency of the system. A comparison was made between WAT results obtained by photoelectric signals and viscosimetry. It was observed that the WAT results obtained by photoelectric signals are anticipated when compared with the viscosimetry data, demonstrating the enhanced sensitivity of the developed method