Application of Heat/Mass Transfer and Thermodynamic Principles to Wax Deposition Modeling and Management

Wax deposition has been a significant flow assurance challenge in the past decades. Significant costs have been attributed to its remediation techniques. The applications of these techniques often require appropriate understandings of the fundamental knowledge from multiple disciplines. Currently different industrial users have developed their own methodologies to tackle wax deposition. However, often due to limited resources available, many of these guidelines are incomplete or are highly based on empirical evidence. This presentation is to present a general summary of industrial understandings on wax modeling management philosophies. Commonly used wax deposition models will be presented and the difference between their assumptions/results of these models will be analyzed. The last part of this presentation identifies the key issues that should be better understood for wax deposition modeling.