INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS FOR COMPLEX OPERATIONS
Paraffin Management
If left unchecked, wax-like substances can be a threat to crude oil productivity, day-today operations, and ultimately your bottom line.
With thousands of different preventative chemistries on the market, it is critical to marry the right chemical solution with the right crude oil. For more than a century, ChampionX has been a pioneer and leader in this field and boasts a trusted and robust methodology that can quickly and easily mitigate paraffin fouling.
By imitating real-life field conditions using innovative technologies in the laboratory, we ensure our tailormade products are reliable, practical, and economical. Most importantly, our chemical solutions keep operations running smoothly, enhance production, and meet the needs of an effective paraffin management program.
Technical assurance and innovation
Selecting the right product and how it’s applied is neither simple nor straightforward. It’s a challenge which ChampionX excels at solving with a methodical and mindful approach:
Technical Evaluation
Remediation
Prevention
Monitoring
Pioneering products
| Type of product | Description | Application uses and advantages |
| Dispersion-based paraffin inhibitors | High-active dispersed polymers | Useful for low-temperature applications where standard, solution-based products would need to be very dilute. Reduced transportation costs and associated environmental benefit. |
| Paraffin inhibitors/wax crystal modifiers | Polymeric paraffin inhibitors formulated in organic solvent | Useful for low-temperature applications where standard, solution-based products would need to be diluted, resulting in reduced transportation costs and associated operational footprint benefit. |
| Pour point depressants (PPDs) | Polymeric paraffin inhibitors in solution | Treat pour point issues in waxy crude oils where cooling crude oil in a pipeline would result in solidification of the entire contents of the line. Chemistries used in PPDs are the same as for standard paraffin inhibitors / wax crystal modifiers. |
| Paraffin dissolvers (solvent based) | Traditional dissolvers for organic deposits | Particularly effective as batch treatments. May be incorporated into pigging programmes or used with debris pick-up gels. |
| Paraffin dissolvers (surfactant based) | Surfactant dissolvers for application in water | Improved environmental profile compared with solvents. Will rapidly separate into aqueous phase and organic paraffin / surfactant layer at end of treatment. |
Variations
| Type of product | Description | Application uses and advantages |
| Combination paraffin dispersant / corrosion inhibitors | Combination products | These combination products have many application uses, help reduce operational footprint and provide a solution when there are limited injection points. |
| SurFlo / SurFlo Plus / SurFlo Enhanced | Rigorous testing ensures these products will not block umbilicals or gas lift wells. | Rigorous testing ensures these products will not block umbilicals. |
Cracking the paraffin conundrum
To determine the most appropriate paraffin control chemistries, the oil and gas industry mainly relies on cold finger testing and wax flow loop analysis, but each have their own acute limitations. To overcome the constraints, ChampionX has developed two novel test methods to evaluate and expand on the performance of other types of paraffin chemistries:
Para-Window
A recent innovative test method exclusive to ChampionX, Para-Window uses an optical probe to test at a more realistic temperature gradient (5ºC) to capture the true potential of paraffin fouling. As a more focused and articulate methodology, an array of paraffin chemistries, from paraffin crystal modifiers and paraffin dispersants to solvents, can be quantified and quickly utilized to guard against costly, and often damaging, deposition problems.
Para-Window provides an increased level of testing sensitivity compared to the industry-standard cold finger test method, which results in better replication of field conditions and therefore, more accurate chemistry selection.
Dynamic Paraffin Deposition Cell
ChampionX’s patented DPDC test method has been developed to include both water and oil in specially designed cells on a horizontal shaker bath. This creates a dynamic mixing condition inside the test cells to closely simulate the conditions in production systems. This allows DPDC to assess the effect of paraffin chemistries, such as crystal modifiers and dispersants, on paraffin deposition in the presence of water, resulting in the accurate replication of field conditions.
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