The crude oil rheological properties significantly depend on its internal structure, the control of which is a promising area of research. Technologies that use various physical fields (acoustic, vibrational, magnetic, cavitation, etc.) make it possible to control the viscosity-temperature properties of oils and are the most promising due to their efficiency and economy. It is shown that the reversible processes of destruction of the native internal structure of thixotropic oils underlie the phenomenon of ‘memory’, which is advisable to use for technologies for controlling the oil rheological properties by physical and mechanical effects. The paper provides a substantiation of the criterion for the effectiveness of methods of physical and mechanical action on the supramolecular structures of oils, as which it is proposed to use the ratio of the increment of thixotropy energy due to the broken intermolecular bonds of the internal structure to the energy spent on the oil processing. Based on the experimental data of approbation, the efficiency coefficients of five promising exposure to physical and mechanical methods were obtained: plasma-pulse impact exceeds 3000, the rotor-pulsating – 400, cavitation in a hydrodynamic transonic jet-nozzle apparatus – 300, microwave oil treatment and processing by a rotating electromagnetic field is no more than 50. Thus, the most effective was the method of pulse-plasma exposure (the Yutkin method), the indisputable advantages of which include low energy consumption, but also the need for increased safety measures. The rotary-pulsating impact is not inferior in terms of viscosity reduction, but consumes 7 times more energy. A single treatment in a hydrodynamic transonic jet-nozzle apparatus gives a relatively small decrease in viscosity (less than 5%), but on the other hand, it shows a significantly low energy consumption for the processing.
The use of technologies for controlling the rheological characteristics of pumped crude oils in the future allows: to increase the throughput of the oil pipeline; maintain the specified pumping capacity at reduced operating modes during scheduled maintenance; increase the efficiency of pumping units running on heavy oils; to stabilize paraffins in suspended (dissolved) state; to reduce the consumption of depressant, drug reduction agents or wax inhibitors. The combination of various exposure to physical and mechanical methods and chemical reagent treatment of oil opens up wide opportunities for improving the technology of pumping heavy oils.
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