Preparation of Grafted Copolymer for Improving Egyptian Crude Oil Flow from Agro-industrial Wastes.

Abstract

The waxy crude oil contained in the pipeline may be eventually severely gelled and restarting the pipeline becomes a significant problem, as the temperature drops below the pour point. The build-up of the gel-like structure in the crude oil bulk phenomena which occur in many process systems (crystallization, precipitation, deposition followed by gelation of wax). The formed agglomerates can turn the oil into a highly viscous fluid which can be hardly transported through pipelines, increasing the cost of producing and transporting oil products and mainly, causing a number of handling problems in regions where the service temperatures are or become seasonally very lowTherefore, it is critical issue to maintain the oil at a temperature above its natural pour point and hence the chemical products that are known as flow improvers (FI), crystal modifiers and pour point reducers , pour point depressants (PPD) or paraffin inhibitors (PI) need to be used to reduce the apparent viscosity, the flow limit, the pour point of oils and can modify the size and shape of crystals and inhibit formation of large paraffin crystal latticesMost of PPDs are polymer based products. Some of them posess linear structures while the others may have comb-like structures. The advantages of using comb-type copolymers as flow improvers for crude oil are to control the crystallization of paraffins and prevent asphaltenes from aggregation based on the relation between nonpolar side alkyl chain and polar group (such as carboxylic, ester, amide groups, etc.). Their nonpolar long side alkyl chains can self-assemble to nucleate the long-chain paraffin crystallization or co-crystallize with paraffins to modulate the wax crystals Vegetable or plant oils represent a renewable resource that can be used as reliable starting material to access new products with a wide array of structural and functional variations. The abundant availability and the relatively low c