Application of full factorial design to screen the factors influencing the wax deposition of Malaysian crude oil

Wax deposition in production pipelines and transportation tubing from offshore to onshore is critical in the petroleum industry due to low-temperature conditions. The most significant popular approach to solve this issue is by inserting a wax inhibitor into the channel. This research aims to reduce the amount of wax formation of Malaysian crude oil by estimating the effective parameters using Design-Expert by full factorial design (FFD) method. Five parameters have been investigated, which are rotation speed (A), cold finger temperature (B), duration of experimental (C), the concentration of poly (stearyl acrylate-co-behenyl acrylate) (SABA) (D), and concentration of nano-silica SiO2 (E). The optimum conditions for reducing the amount of wax deposit have been identified using FFD at 300 rpm, 10 ℃, 1 h, 1200 ppm and 400 ppm, respectively. The amount of wax deposit estimated is 0.12 g. The regression model’s variance results revealed that the R2 value of 0.9876, showing 98.76% of the data variation, can be described by the model. The lack of fit is not important in comparison to the pure error, which is good. The lack of fit F value of 12.85 means that there is only a 7.41% probability that this huge can occur because of noise. The influence of cold finger temperature was reported as the main contributing factor in the formation of wax deposits compared to other factors. In addition, the interaction between factor B and factor C revealed the highest interaction effect on the wax deposition. In conclusion, the best interaction variables for wax inhibition can be determined using FFD. It is a valued tool to measure and detect the unique relations of two or more variables. As a result, the findings of this study can be used to develop a reliable model for predicting optimum conditions for reducing wax deposits and the associated costs and processing time.

Clay Ceramic Support Membrane Optimization Using Factorial Design Approach

In the present study, the effect of Sintering temperature, Particle size and Heating rate of the ceramic support membrane Elaboration based on dry clay were evaluated using full factorial design and investigated by porosity and mechanical strength measures. The flat supports have been prepared from 5 g of the material with a two fraction 2 and 30 µm, the extrusion was performed using the uniaxial pressing in applicant a pressure of 12 tones, the supports sintered between 900° C and 1200°C with a different heating rate (1°C/min and 10°C/min). By using full factorial design 23, it was found that the sintering temperature is the main controlling factors of the physical properties of dry ceramic support membrane, and its increase had a positive effect on Mechanical strength and negative effect on porosity. The interactions between the factors were relatively less important, and they had different (antagonistic/synergetic) influence on the properties. The optimal factors to elaborate the support membrane include a particle size of 2 µm, sintering temperature of 950°C, Heating rate of 1°C predicting the porosity of 40, 8% and Mechanical strength of 12 MPa.

Optimization of the Outlet Flow Ratio of Mini-Hydrocyclone Separators Using the Full Factorial Design Method to Determine the Separation Efficiency

Cyclone separators are widely used to eliminate particles flowing through pipelines in equipment from various industrial processes. Unlike general filters, cyclone separators can constantly and effectively eliminate foreign substances present in the fluid flowing through the equipment. In this study, we fabricated mini-hydrocyclone separators using the 3D printing method for application in the steam and water analysis system (SWAS) in a thermal power plant instead of the conventional strainer filter. The gravimetric method was used to measure the separation efficiency of the hydrocyclone separators and compare the weights of the sludge discharged from the underflow and overflow outlets. The outlet flow ratio was optimized by adjusting the diameters of the spigot and vortex finder of the separators, which influenced the outlet flow rate. To apply the gravimetric method more objectively, the optimum values of the diameters of the vortex finder and spigot with an outlet flow ratio of 1 were determined using full factorial design (FFD) in the design of experiments (DOE). The obtained values were verified through numerical analysis using the ANSYS Fluent software. Furthermore, after fabrication of the mini-hydrocyclone separators using an SLA-type 3D printer, we conducted a numerical analysis, and the results were compared with that of the actual experiment. It was observed that the use of FFD can effectively optimize the desired outlet flow ratio in the mini-hydrocyclone separator. In addition, the changes in the outlet flow ratio do not affect the separation efficiency of the cyclone separators.