Thermal Shrinkage and Gas Void Formation of Waxy Crude Oil –Gas Voids Study

This paper discussed on the project entitled, “Thermal shrinkage and gas voids formation of waxy crude oil –gas voids study”. It consists of the project’s background, objectives, and problem statements, the relevance of the project, the literature review, the methodology which is the flow of the project and lastly the expected result of this project. In this project the author reported a study of the gas voids formed in gelled waxy crude which is a waxy crude oil which undergoes thermal shrinkage or cooling process. The study is about gathering all possible information about the gas voids for further study which will lead to the result of compressibility of the gelled crude. The main objective of this project is merely to prove the compressibility of the gelled crude since gelled crude problem occur during operation shutdown and been assumed that gelled crude behave as incompressible high viscous fluid. After certain shutdown period or non-operating period the petroleum remains in the pipeline and undergoes thermal shrinkage due to low seabed temperature and subsequently leading to formation of gelled crude. Since they assumed that gelled crude behaves as incompressible high viscous fluid, high pressure pump is needed to move the gelled crude or to make the gelled crude to flow in the start-up process after certain shutdown period. At the end of this research, if sufficient information on the gas voids is obtained successfully further explanation could be mode on the compressibility and subsequently the pressure needed in the startup process can be reduced thus reducing the cost for facilities such as the pumps. In order to provide such information, the crucial data to be considered are the volume of the gas voids over liquid volume, the pressure of the gas voids, effect of cooling rate on the gas voids volume and lastly the composition of the gas voids itself. The experimental setup for this project is about the simulation of cooling and gelling of the static petroleum crude in the pipeline which located on the seabed with some pressure reading device and the gas chromatography for the gas composition analysis purpose