Prefouling Behavior of Suspended Particles in Petroleum Fluid Flow

The production and transportation of petroleum uids will be severely affected by the deposition of suspended particles (i.e. asphaltenes, diamondoids, paraffin / wax, sand, etc.) in petroleum uid production wells and/or transfer pipelines. in certain instances, the amount of precipitation is rather large causing complete fouling of these conduits. therefore, it is important to understand the behavior of suspended particles during petroleum uid ow conditions. in this paper, we present an analytical model for the prefouling behavior of suspended particles corresponding to petroleum uids production conditions. we predict the rate of particle deposition during various turbulent ow regimes. the turbulent boundary layer theory and the concepts of mass transfer are utilized to model and calculate the particle deposition rates on the walls of owing conduits. the developed model accounts for the eddy diffusivity and brownian diffusivity as well as for inertial effects. the analysis presented in this paper shows that rates of particle deposition (during petroleum uid production) on the walls of the owing channel due solely to diffusional effects are small. it is also shown that deposition rates decrease with increasing particle size. however, when the process is momentum controlled (large particle sizes), higher deposition rates are expected.