The interaction of waxes with pour point depressants

Paraffin wax deposition from crude oils at low temperature is one of the serious and long-standing problems in petroleum industry. Addition of pour point depressants (PPD) has been proved to be an efficient way to inhibit wax deposition. The influence of PPD on wax precipitation at low temperature was investigated. The amount and composition of wax precipitated from paraffin solutions with and without PPD at different temperatures were studied by high speed centrifuge and gas chromatography (GC), respectively. The interactions between waxes and PPD were investigated by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The results showed that PPD do not completely prevent the wax from precipitating, but just shift the precipitation toward a lower temperature. This conclusion was identified from the analysis of the amount and composition of precipitated wax as well as the transition temperatures and energies of wax. It was shown that this effect is due to the structure of wax is partly transformed from orthorhombic into hexagonal form by PPD.