By the use of differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), a new method to measure the wax content of crude oil has been developed. In this paper, the wax content of a crude oil is proposed and proved to be the Q (total thermal effect of wax precipitation in sample) ratio of the crude oil and its corresponding wax obtained by using standard acetone method, i.e. Q(oil)/Q(wax). For the 14 studied crude oils with the wax content ranging from 1 to 27 wt.%, the wax contents determined by the presented method are in good agreement with those determined by standard acetone method, with an absolute average deviation of only 0.82 wt.%. This method has an advantage over reported DSC methods in which the exact dissolution or precipitation enthalpy of wax is a must. It is also found that the wax contents determined by either of the two methods show good linear relationship with the total thermal effect Q(oil), with the correlation coefficients over 0.96. According to the empirical correlations, the wax content of a crude oil can be easily determined by using the DSC total thermal effect Q(oil). In addition and more significantly, the new method can be applied to improve the accuracy in determining the amount of precipitated wax in a waxy crude oil at different temperatures. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.