Investigation of cyclohexanone pentaerythritol ketal as a clean flow improver for crude oil

• In the crystal of title compound, two cyclohexyl groups stack in different directions because of the fixed spiro structure.
• The thermal analysis shows cyclohexanone pentaerythritol ketal decomposes under relatively lower temperatures.
• The title compound can reduce the viscosity of crude oil under low dosage and limit the degree of wax cocrystallization.
• The high content of saturated HC makes for cyclohexanone pentaerythritol ketal’s effective viscosity reduction.

The decomposition of polymer in the oil refining process is the main problem for the application of typical polymer flow improvers, so there is a requirement to seek for new small molecular flow improvers. In this work, a small molecular flow improver, cyclohexanone pentaerythritol ketal, was synthesized and fully characterized. The further evaluation test showed that the synthesized compound can improve the flow properties of crude oil samples by reducing the viscosity of crude oil by 70% at most and depressing the pour point slightly. With the composition group's content of different crude oil samples and the response to the additive, it was found that the high content of saturated HC makes for the effective viscosity reduction. The role of cyclohexanone pentaerythritol ketal in limiting the degree of cocrystallization can be further confirmed by the average particle size and the particle morphology analysis of saturated HC component illustrated from microscopic crystal morphology. Besides, cyclohexanone pentaerythritol ketal is a cleaner crude oil additive with its decomposition at relatively low temperature in light of the result of thermal analysis.

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