Influence of pressure and temperature on the flow behaviour of heavy fuel oils

Transportation and consumption of petroleum products around the world have created a potential risk for oil spills in the environment. Knowledge of high-pressure rheological behaviour of heavy crude oil fractions, which are usually transported in oil tankers, is very important to design deep recovering operations of the oil remaining in the tanks after an accident. The effect of pressure on the viscosity of these materials is not well understood, this is mainly due to experimental constraints involving high-pressure rheology measurements at low shear rates. Consequently, the overall objective of this work is to model the temperature–pressure–viscosity dependence of a selected heavy fuel oil in a wide range of pressure and temperature. With this aim, viscous flow tests at different temperatures and differential pressures and modulated differential scanning calorimetry tests were carried out on the heavy fuel oil selected. A temperature–pressure–viscosity model (FMT model) fits fairly well the experimental results obtained in the whole differential pressure range studied. However, viscosity values at temperatures lower than 10°C cannot be predicted due to microstructural changes associated with the solidification process of the heaviest components of the fuel oil tested.