Mitigation of paraffin wax deposition in cretaceous crude oils of Wyoming

In this paper we describe a laboratory simulation of paraffin deposition using a specialty designed flow-tube apparatus. This was used to determine the deposition from the Dakota crude oil obtained from the wells of the Fourteen Mile field in the Big Horn basin. Two paraffin inhibitors were obtained for this Dakota crude and used to mitigate the wax deposition in these experiments. The inhibitors were tested at different concentrations and the deposition rates were obtained for each of the inhibitors. Based on these experiments, the use of one of the inhibitors resulted in a 35% reduction in wax deposition. However, it was also determined that this solvent was not effective in removing wax once it had already deposited. (C) 2004 Published by Elsevier B.V.