Tese: Startup flow of gelled crude oils in pipelines: the roles of shrinkage and irreversible time dependence
Aluno(a) : Behbood AbediOrientador(a): Paulo R de Souza Mendes
Área de Concentração: Termociências
Data: 18/08/2020
Link para tese/dissertação: http://doi.org/10.17771/PUCRio.acad.50268
Resumo: Throughout the wax gelation, the network of paraffin crystals modifies the behavior of waxy crude oil. It changes from a low viscosity Newtonian to a high viscosity time-dependent material with yield strength. Now, it is totally challenging to find out the restart pressure for gelled crude oil flow with such a complex microstructure. Through my Master`s dissertation, we investigated two viscoplastic materials, namely a hair gel with a negligible thixotropy and a quite thixotropic 2% aqueous suspension of Laponite to mimic the startup flow of waxy crude oils. For both materials, the minimum axial pressure gradient required for the onset of flow was measured, and the measured values were in good agreement with the prediction of a conventional force balance. On the other hand, industry cases have exhibited that the just mentioned force balance leads to an overestimation of the minimum startup pressure gradient. In some studies, an elicited explanation is the thixotropic behavior of the gelled crude, but our above-mentioned results served to falsify it. Over the first part of my PhD thesis, we aimed to verify in the laboratory that why the force balance does not hold for gelled crude oil and then we sought a physically proper explanation for this discrepancy and also a reliable way to predict the minimum startup pressure gradient. Along these lines, we show the role of gelled crude oil's shrinkage in the discordance between static yield strength and required minimum pressure gradient to onset the flow, through rheometry and fluid flow in a tube. Then, we introduce a modified force balance equation with the role of shrinkage included to best estimate the minimum restart pressure gradient. Another essential element through the restart flow of gelled waxy crude is to find out a reliable strategy to mathematically model the material`s rheology. In most models that aim at predicting the rheological behavior of gelled waxy crude oil, the microstructure changes during flow are assumed to be thixotropic; reversible time dependent. But, we observed in our experiments with well-controlled flow and thermal histories that the irreversible character of time dependence is quite evident. Thus, in the second part of thesis we propose a model based on previous developments by Souza Mendes and co-workers that accounts for the irreversible time dependence observed experimentally in a waxy crude oil. The predictive capability of the proposed model is then assessed via comparisons with experimental data.