화학공학소재연구정보센터
Energy & Fuels, Vol.22, No.2, 1174-1182, 2008
Measurement of the liquid-deposit interface temperature during solids deposition from wax-solvent mixtures under static cooling conditions
The liquid-deposit interface temperature for solids deposition was measured under static cooling (i.e., without any induced shear stress) from prepared mixtures of a petroleum wax (C-20-C-40) and a multicomponent paraffinic solvent (C-9-C-16) at different coolant temperatures. Two designs for the cooling of wax-solvent mixtures were developed for monitoring the temperature at fixed radial locations in a cylindrical vessel. The wax-solvent mixture was cooled from a temperature higher than its wax appearance temperature (WAT), and the movement of the liquid-deposit interface was obtained from the rate of change of temperature at different radial locations. The deposit-layer thickness increased more rapidly with a larger heat-transfer area and a lower coolant temperature. The interface temperature was observed to be equal to the WAT of the wax-solvent mixture, and it decreased slightly when the liquid-region temperature became less than the WAT of the original mixture (causing the precipitation of wax crystals). The results of this study support the constant-interface-temperature assumption made in the heat-transfer approach for modeling solids deposition from waxy mixtures, but not the increasing-interface-temperature assumption in the molecular-diffusion approach.