Rheological behavior of oil sludge from Algerian refinery storage tanks

Abstract

The consumption and demand for petroleum are increasing dramatically with the rapid development of industry and energy sector. As a result, petroleum refineries produce the greatest amount of oily sludge formed at the bottom of storage tanks during oil storage operations, which has a severely negative impact on the storage capacity and the operational safety of the storage tank. The present study focuses on the rheology of this complex fluid from Algerian crude oil storage tanks. Rheological measurements were performed at different temperatures under steady shear and dynamic oscillometry using AR-2000 Rheometer. The results obtained show that the sludge exhibits yield-pseudoplastic flow behavior at low shear rates, which is adequately described by the Herschel Bulkley model based on the standard error and correlation coefficient values. However, quasi-Newtonian flow behavior occurs at very high shear rates. The increase in temperature had positive effects on the rheological properties of the sludge, including dynamic viscosity, shear stress, yield stress, complex modulus, elastic modulus and viscous modulus. The dynamic rheology studies have shown that the sludge material behaves more like a solid than a liquid under all experimental conditions studied.

Keywords

• Crude oil
• Rheology
• Sludge
• Storage tank
• Temperature
• Viscosity