International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 136 (2019) 457–469

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International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijhmt

Temperature drop and gelatinization characteristics of waxy crude oil in

1000 m3 single and double-plate floating roof oil tanks during storage
Min Wang a, Xinyu Zhang b, Qianqian Shao c, Jingfa Li d, Bo Yu d,⇑
a
Tianjin Research Institute for Water Transport Engineering, M.O.T., Tianjin 300456, China
b
Sinopec International Petroleum Exploration and Production Corporation, Beijing 100029, China
c
Guangdong University of Petrochemical Technology, Maoming 525000, China
d
School of Mechanical Engineering, Beijing Key Laboratory Pipeline Critical Technology and Equipment for Deepwater Oil & Gas Development, Beijing Institute of Petrochemical
Technology, Beijing 102617, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Single and double-plate floating roof oil tanks are two types of widely used floating roof oil tanks in
Received 21 November 2018 petrochemical industry. However, the differences in flow and hear transfer characteristics of waxy crude
Received in revised form 1 February 2019 oil inside these two tanks have been studied insufficiently. Finite volume method is employed in this
Accepted 24 February 2019
research to study the temperature drop and gelatinization processes of waxy crude oil as well as the dif-
Available online 9 March 2019
ferences in single and double-plate floating roof tanks. Based on a comprehensive consideration of the
atmosphere, soil, floating roof oil tank as well as the tank structure and the variations of the waxy crude
Keywords:
oil state and rheological behavior, general physical and mathematical models are established. In the
Single and double-plate floating roof oil
tanks
model, wax precipitation and gelatinization processes of waxy crude oil are described by the enthalpy-
Temperature drop porous media method. Non-Newtonian behavior is described by the Power law equation. Turbulent nat-
Wax precipitation and gelatinization ural convection is described by the LES method. SIMPLE algorithm is employed to couple pressure and
Non-Newtonian fluid velocity. Taking 1000 m3 single and double-plate floating roof oil tanks as examples, the evolution of
LES oil temperature and flow behavior is studied and the variations of the gel oil thickness and heat flux
are analyzed. Moreover, the differences between these two tanks are also discussed. Results show that
due to the structure difference of the tank roof, the temperature drop rates are 0.018 °C/h and
0.007 °C/h respectively in single and double-plate floating roof tanks in the case of this research.
Secondly, for the growth of gel oil on tank bottom, in double-plate floating roof tank, gel oil thickness
keeps growing and fluctuating, while in single-plate tank, the original gelled oil layer disappears firstly
and then increases gradually. Thirdly, although for both tanks, tank roof is the main part of heat dissipa-
tion towards the atmosphere, the maximum heat fluxes are respectively over 2.0 kW and 0.4 kW for sin-
gle and double-plate floating roof tanks, and the total average heat fluxes respectively are 1.49 kW and
0.59 kW.
Ó 2019 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

1. Introduction
Almost 80% of crude oil produced in China is waxy crude oil
which is characterized by high pour point, high viscosity and com-
plex rheological property. Thus, in the practical production pro-
cess, heating is always necessary. Single and double-plate
floating roof oil tanks are the widely used oil tank in petrochemical
industry. During storage, oil temperature drops due to the heat
transfer between oil and environment. When oil temperature is
below wax precipitation point, wax crystals start to precipitate in
the oil. When wax precipitation amount reaches 1–2% [1,2] among
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: yubobox@vip.163.com (B. Yu).
the total, oil would gel, which seriously threatens the process
safety and may even cause accidents. Therefore, it is of great signif-
icance to study the thermal and gelatinization characteristics in
the single and double-plate floating roof oil tanks during storage.
There are two methods to study the characteristics of heat
transfer of waxy crude oil in an oil tank: experimental study and
numerical study. Due to its advantages in low cost, short research
period and comprehensive research results, numerical simulation
method is preferred by more and more researchers in recent years.
Li et al. [3,4] investigated the temperature drop process of crude oil
in a 10
104 m3 double-plate floating roof tank using experimen-
tal and numerical simulation method. The effects of crude oil prop-
erty, tank roof type, initial oil storage temperature, solar radiation
and liquid level on oil temperature drop were analyzed and

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2019.02.082
0017-9310/Ó 2019 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
458 M. Wang et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 136 (2019) 457–469
discussed. However, in this study, phase change and variation of
rheological behavior of oil during wax precipitation were neglected
and the results can be applied only to the temperature drop char-
acteristics of crude oil with low wax content. Yang et al. [5]
adopted experimental method to study the characteristics of tem-
perature drop in a 10
104 m3 floating roof tank in northeast
China. The profiles of the oil temperature in the core region and
along vertical direction in the tank were obtained and analyzed.
However, in this research, the reason for temperature drop of oil
in the tank was not investigated systematically. By considering
the relationship between oil property and temperature, Zhao
et al. [6,7] studied the gelatinization process of waxy crude oil in
the floating roof tank. The gelatinization process of waxy crude
oil was described with the classical phase change model proposed
by Voller. However, during simulation, release of latent heat due to
wax gelatinization was regarded as heat capacity at constant pres-
sure. Moreover, during the study of the gel oil growth, natural con-
vection was simplified into heat conduction. All these factors limit
the application of the research results. Wang et al. [8] applied
numerical approach to study the temperature drop characteristics
in a model tank which was geometrically similar to 10
104 m3
double-plate floating roof oil tank with the similarity ratio was
1:10. Furthermore, the effects of physical properties of waxy crude
oil on the temperature drop process were analyzed. However, this
research can only be applied to small-size floating roof tank.
Besides, in this research, neither the increase of gel oil thickness
nor the heat transfer process was analyzed. Wang et al. [9] inves-
tigated heat transfer characteristics of waxy crude oil in a
10
104 m3 floating roof tank for long-term storage using both
experiment and numerical simulation methods. On the aspect of
experimental investigation, temperature drop processes of waxy
crude oil at four different wax contents were analyzed, also the
variation of vertical temperature distribution against time was
obtained. On the aspect of numerical investigation, standard k-e
model was applied to study the gelatinization process due to tem-
perature drop, as well as the melting process due to temperature
increase. However, the author still didn’t analyze the gelatinization
process of waxy crude oil deeply. Besides, the results of this
research were only applicable to double-plate floating roof tank.
Sun et al. [10] carried out the numerical study on the flow and heat
transfer characteristics of waxy crude oil in the cooling and heating
processes during static tank storage, and the effects of the atmo-
sphere temperature, solar radiation on the temperature field were
analyzed. Results showed that the cooling and heating processes
can be divided into several stages and each stage displays different
characteristics. Moreover, solar radiation has great influence on the
temperature fluctuation, and the atmosphere temperature has a
great influence on the temperature drop rate. Oliveski et al. [11]
studied the temperature drop process in a small tank in 15 h using
both numerical and experimental methods, in which the Ra num-
bers were fixed at 4.3
109 and 3.1
109 respectively. Oil temper-
ature distribution along the tank height at the center of the tank
was obtained and compared with the experimental results. The
comparison showed that these results agree well with each other.
Oliveski [12] also studied the cooling process of the fluid with high
Pr number fluid in tanks of different sizes using finite volume
method. Correlations between the Nu number versus ratio of
height to radius, dimensionless total heat transfer coefficient, Ra
and Pr numbers were obtained. However, these researches focused
on the small-size tank, without considering either phase change or
non-Newtonian property of crude oil. Besides, variations of heat
flux and gel oil growth during temperature drop were not involved.
Some researchers [13–15] also focused on small-size model tanks
and simplified the turbulent natural convection into a laminar nat-
ural convection. Finite volume method was adopted to simulate
the temperature drop process of crude oil numerically and the rela-
tionship between average oil temperature and storage time, oil
level and tank radius, total heat transfer coefficient, Ra number,
Pr number were fitted. However, due the too many assumptions
and simplifications, the results are much different from the
practice.
In conclusion, although there have been some researches on
temperature drop process of waxy crude oil in floating roof tank,
many shortcomings exist as well. (a) Previous researches usually
treat oil state and rheological behavior change of waxy crude oil
during temperature drop process as the change of physical prop-
erty. Also, the interaction between wax crystals and liquid waxy
crude oil are not considered accurately. (b) Previous researches
commonly focus on double-plate floating roof tank while seldom
on single-plate floating roof tank or compare both. (c) Previous
researches make much effort in the study of temperature drop of
waxy crude oil inside the tank, while systematic exploration on
the mechanism of heat transfer and the growth of gel oil inside
the tank is lacking. Therefore, in this study, with the consideration
of the variations of oil state and rheological behavior, general phys-
ical and mathematical models of the temperature drop and gela-
tinization of waxy crude oil in single and double-plate floating
roof oil tanks are established. 1000 m3 single and double-plate
floating roof oil tank are taken as examples to study the character-
istics of the temperature drop and gelatinization of waxy crude oil.
The evolution of the gel oil thickness and heat flux are studied and
analyzed in detail. Furthermore, the difference between single and
double-plate floating roof oil tanks on the characteristics of heat
transfer and gelatinization are also compared and analyzed
systematically.
2. Physical and mathematical models
2.1. Physical model
The physical model of single and double-plate floating roof oil
tanks contains the soil layer under the tank, air layer and steel
layer in the tank roof (for single-plate floating roof oil tank, there
is no air layer), waxy crude oil in the tank, steel layer on the tank
bottom, steel layer and insulating layer on the tank wall. Thus, heat
transfer in the tank involves the coupled heat transfer of gas-
liquid-solid (for double-plate floating roof oil tank) or liquid-solid
(for single-plate floating roof oil tank), heat conduction between
tank and soil and forced convection between tank body and atmo-
sphere. Predictably, heat transfer in both single and double-plate
floating roof oil tanks is complex.
The state of wax crystal and waxy crude oil state varies depend-
ing upon oil temperature [16]. Specifically, at the initial moment,
the oil temperature is relatively high and oil appears as pure liquid
and shows Newtonian behavior. When oil temperature drops to
below wax precipitation point Tw, wax crystals begin to precipitate
and solid-liquid dispersion system begins to form. At this time,
waxy crude oil still shows Newtonian behavior. When oil temper-
ature continuously drops to below abnormal point Ta, waxy crude
oil begins to show non-Newtonian behavior. At this stage, the
solid-liquid dispersion system still exists. When oil temperature
is below thixotropy appearance point Tt, wax crystals in the oil
begin to cross-link with each other and form wax crystal porous
media [16], oil begin to gelate. Table 1 presents variations of the
state of wax crystal and waxy crude oil and rheological behavior
with oil temperature.
Furthermore, the size of the oil tank is large and the turbulent is
violent. For instance, the radius of the 1000 m3 floating roof oil
tank is 6 m [17,18], and the Ra number reaches up to 2.0
1013
when the temperature difference is 30 °C. Therefore, the computa-
tional burden and calculation time are unaffordable. Based on this,
 M. Wang et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 136 (2019) 457–469 459

Table 1
Variations of the states of wax crystal and waxy crude oil, rheological behavior with oil temperature [16].

Oil temperature T  Tw Tw > T  Ta Ta > T  Tt T < Tt

Wax crystal Melted Precipitated and suspended in waxy Precipitated and suspended in waxy Formed the wax crystal porous
crude oil crude oil media
Waxy crude oil Pure liquid Solid-liquid dispersion system Solid-liquid dispersion system Stored in the porous of porous
media
Rheological Newtonian Newtonian behavior Non-Newtonian behavior Non-Newtonian behavior
behavior behavior


the actual floating roof oil tank is simplified into a 1 rad one in this @ qui
study with the consideration of the axisymmetric of the oil tank, as ¼0 ð1Þ
@xi
Fig. 1 shows.


 " !#
  
2.2. Mathematical model @ qui @ qui uj @p @ @ui @uj @ sij
þ ¼ þ l þ  þ qg i þ sui
@t @xj @xi @xj @xj @xi @xj
General mathematical model of single and double-plate floating
roof oil tanks is established within the two-dimensional cylindrical
ð2Þ
coordinate system involving the non-Newtonian behavior


  !  
[16,19,20] and wax precipitation (phase change) [21–26]. Consid- @ qcp T @ qcp ui T @ @T @ cp qj
ering the coupled gas-liquid-solid (double-plate floating roof oil þ ¼ k  þ sh ð3Þ
@t @xj @xj @xj @xj
tank) or liquid-solid (single-plate floating roof oil tank) heat trans-
fer process in the tank, solid (steel layer, insulating layer) is partic-
  

ularly considered as fluid with infinite viscosity to realize an sij ¼ q ui uj ui uj ð4Þ
integration solving. Besides, LES method is adopted to calculate
the turbulent flow and heat transfer of waxy crude oil in the tank.
  
The governing equations for the floating roof oil tank above the qj ¼ q uj T uj T ð5Þ
ground, which contains steel and air on tank top, waxy crude oil,
steel on tank bottom and steel and insulating layer on tank wall, where q, b and cp are mass density, volume expansion coefficient
  
are shown in Eqs. (1)–(5). and specific heat respectively. ui , p and T are the velocity, pressure

Fig. 1. Schematics of floating roof oil tank: (a) single-plate floating roof oil tank; (b) double-plate floating roof oil tank (front view); (c) floating roof oil tank (top view).
460 M. Wang et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 136 (2019) 457–469

and temperature after filter. sui is source item caused by the binding l
 

sui ¼  ui  ui;s ð11Þ
effect of wax precipitation. sh is the source item of latent heat of Kd
wax precipitation, which will be discussed later. sij and qj are the where ui, ui,s are the oil velocity and wax crystal velocity respec-
sub-grid scale stress tensor and sub-grid scale heat flux, which tively. Kd is the permeability of wax crystal porous media, which
can be determined by Eqs. (6) and (7) [27–31]. can be determined by the Kozeny-Carman equation [21–25], as
 1 shown in Eq. (12).
sij ¼ 2lt Sij þ dij skk ð6Þ
3
ð1  g s Þ3
Kd ¼ K0 ð12Þ
 g 2s
lt @ T
qj ¼  ð7Þ where K0 is the permeability constant and is set as 109 in this
Prt @xj

paper [22,23]. gs is the amount of the wax precipitation.
In Eqs. (6) and (7), Sij is the rate-of-strain tensor for the resolved Besides, latent heat would release during the temperature drop

  
process. In this research, the released latent heat is characterized
@u
scale, which is calculated by Sij ¼ 12 @u i
@xj
þ @xij [27–31]. Prt is sub-
by the source item sh in energy equation.
grid Prandtl number, which is fixed as 0.87 [26,27]. lt is sub-grid
scale viscosity. The model of the SGS viscosity is critical for LES, @ ðqDHÞ
sh ¼  ð13Þ
and the Smagorinshy-Lilly model [26–29] is applied in this @t
research in order to account for the flow near the wall, as shown where DH is latent heat. In this paper, DH = (1  gs)L, where L is the
in Eq. (8). total phase change latent heat.
 
lt ¼ qL2s S ð8Þ 2.3. Boundary and initial conditions

where Ls = min(jd, CsD) [26–29]. j is the von Karman constant and

2.3.1. Boundary condition
is taken as 0.41. d is the distance to the closest wall. Cs is the
 qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
 
Boundary condition includes oil tank boundary condition and
 
Smagorinsky constant. D is the filter width S ¼ 2Sij Sij . soil boundary condition. As to the oil tank, the tank roof and tank
wall are the third boundary condition, whose convective heat
On the other hand, governing equation for the heat conduction
transfer coefficient is 25.63 W/(m2 °C) [16]. The axis of the tank
of soil under the tank is as following.
 is the axisymmetric boundary. Steel layer on the tank bottom
@ ðqsoil csoil T Þ @ @T and the left part of the soil layer surface are the coupled boundary.
¼ ksoil ð9Þ
@t @xj @xj As to the soil, the left and right boundaries of soil layer are axisym-
metric boundary and adiabatic boundary respectively. Bottom
boundary of the soil layer is constant temperature boundary with
2.2.1. Rheological behavior
the temperature 10 °C. Top boundary of the soil layer includes
When oil temperature is higher than abnormal point of waxy
the coupled boundary condition on left part and the third bound-
crude oil, the waxy crude oil shows Newtonian behavior. In this
ary condition on the right part. The convective heat transfer coef-
case, oil viscosity is only determined by oil temperature. On the
ficient is also 25.63 W/(m2 °C) [16].
other hand, when oil temperature is lower than abnormal point,
Atmosphere temperature is necessary in this research. Mea-
oil acts as pseudoplastic fluid. The correlation between apparent
sured atmosphere temperature at a place located in northwestern
viscosity and shear rate can be well described by the power law
part of China from Nov. 10, 2014 to Jan. 20, 2015 is taken as a sam-
equation [16]. It is worth to mention that when the oil temperature
ple in this paper, as shown in Fig. 2.
drops below thixotropy appearance point Tt, the precipitated wax
For the interface between steel layer at tank bottom and the soil
crystals cross-link with each other to form a wax crystal porous
layer under the tank, there is coupling boundary condition
media with liquid waxy crude oil enwrapped in it. At this moment,
described as,
the enwrapped liquid waxy crude oil is still pseudoplastic fluid and  
its rheological behavior can be described by the power law equa- @T  @T 
ksoil ¼ k ð14Þ
@x soil @x steel
steel
tion [16].
Based on this, power law equation is adopted in this research to
describe the non-Newtonian behavior of waxy crude oil, as shown
in Eq. (10). 15
la ¼ K c_ n1 ð10Þ 10
daily minimum temperature
daily maximum temperature
1
where c_ is shear rate, s n
. K is consistency coefficient, Pas . n is flow
5
behavior index.
0
2.2.2. Wax precipitation and gelatinization
When oil temperature is below wax precipitation point, wax -5
crystals precipitate and suspend in the oil and flow with the oil.
-10
When oil temperature is below thixotropy appearance point,
wax crystals in the oil cross-link with each other and form -15
wax crystal porous media, which exerts binding effect on the
oil. Furthermore, with the decrease of the oil temperature, -20
porosity of the wax crystal porous media decreases gradually 0 300 600 900 1200 1500 1800
and the binding effect becomes stronger gradually [16]. The time (h)
Darcy’s law is adopted to describe this binding effect [21–25],
as Eq. (11) show. Fig. 2. Variations of the atmosphere temperature.
 M. Wang et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 136 (2019) 457–469 461

8 
2.3.2. Initial condition < 0; T P Tw
Before computation, the oil tank is considered to be kept empty gs ¼    ð18Þ

: 5 Tw T
statically for a long time, during which the heat exchange between 9
%; T < Tw
tank and the environment reaches a balance. Then hot waxy crude
According to the correlation between the latent heat DH versus
oil is rapidly pumped into and fills the tank. Therefore, in this paper
the wax precipitation amount gs and the correlation between the
it is supposed that the initial temperature of the waxy crude oil, air
wax precipitation amount gs versus oil temperature T, it can be
layer, steel layer, insulating layer are all 30 °C. Soil surface temper-
derived that when oil temperature is below wax precipitation
ature is considered as equal to atmosphere temperature outside
point, f1(DH) can be determined by Eq. (19) [8,9].
the tank at the initial moment, which is 1 °C. Soil temperature at
different depth is obtained by linear interpolation between con- (  
1
T w  180 1  DLH ; DH < L
stant temperature layer and soil surface temperature. f ð DH Þ ¼  ð19Þ
T; DH ¼ L
3. Numerical method and model validation
where wax precipitation point Tw, abnormal point Ta and thixotropy
appearance point Tt are 27 °C, 25 °C and 23 °C respectively.
3.1. Numerical method

Finite volume method is adopted to discretize the governing 3.2.2. Properties of the floating roof oil tank
equations, where transient term, convective term and diffusion In this research, numerical study is performed on the tempera-
term are discretized by the fully implicit scheme, GAMMA scheme ture drop and gelatinization characteristics in 1000 m3 single and
and central difference scheme respectively. Furthermore, SIMPLE double-plate floating roof oil tanks, the sizes of which x1, x2, x3,
algorithm based on non-uniform collocated grid is adopted to solve x4, x5, x6, r1, r2 and r3 are 5.0 m, 0.01 m, 8.01 m, 8.02 m, 8.52 m,
the discretized governing equations. To improve the computational 8.53 m, 6.0 m, 6.11 m and 11.11 m respectively [17,18]. Thus air
efficiency, multigrid method is introduced in this paper to solve the layer in double-plate floating roof tank, waxy crude oil, soil and
soil temperature under the tank bottom. The update of the latent insulating layer have x
r respectively being 0.5 m
6.0 m,
heat content DH is crucial for calculation and the method in liter- 8.0 m
6.0 m, 5.0 m
11.11 m and 8.53 m
0.1 m. For a better
ature [21] is applied in this research. balance between computation accuracy and efficiency, tank roof,
tank bottom and tank wall are discretized with dense mesh, while
3.2. Properties of the waxy crude oil and floating roof oil tank tank core region is discretized with coarse mesh. According to trial
calculation, the meshes (x
r) for air layer, waxy crude oil, soil and
3.2.1. Properties of the waxy crude oil insulating layer are respectively 65
101, 100
101, 66
138
A kind of waxy crude oil produced in an oil field in northwest- and 178
13. Taking the waxy crude oil region for example, the
ern part of China is selected and the properties of waxy crude oil minimum grid size in
direction and in r direction are respec-
and wax crystal are obtained by experiment. Properties of air, steel, tively 5.78
104 m and 2.42
104 m. Besides, after a series of
soil and insulating layer are shown in Table 2 [3,4,8,9]. selection, time step in this research is set to be 2.0 s.
With the consideration of the variations of rheological behavior
and gelatinization process, the viscosity of waxy crude oil is calcu-
3.3. Model validation
lated by Eq. (15) [8,9].
8  
> 3.3.1. Verification of grid sensitivity and time step sensitivity
>
> 0:058e0:0371 T ; T P Tw
<   Based on the discretization introduced in Section 3.2.2, grid sen-
l¼ 0:058e0:0371 T ð15Þ
; Tw > T P Ta sitivity and time step sensitivity of the computation results are dis-
>
>
1g s
>
:  cussed. Waxy crude oil in 1000 m3 double-plate floating roof tank
la ; T < Ta
during a 100 h temperature drop is taken for this discussion. The
Apparent viscosity la of waxy crude oil is determined by Eq. results are shown in Figs. 3 and 4. Note that in Fig. 3, the mesh
(10), where consistency coefficient K and flow behavior index n information is given in form of x
r for the waxy crude oil domain.
is fitted by the experimental data [8,9], as Eqs. (16) and (17) In Fig. 3, totally three sets of grid systems are used for grid sen-
show. sitivity study. Based on the three sets of grids, temperature drop
 processes of waxy crude oil in double-plate floating roof tank dur-
K ¼ 176:4424e0:354 T ð16Þ ing 100 h are calculated. Core region temperature and average oil
temperature inside the tank, total heat flux of the tank are com-
 2
pared for the three sets of grids. The results based on the grid sys-
n ¼ 0:0157ðT T a Þ þ 1 ð17Þ
tem of 120
121 are relatively close to those on 100
101 grids,
Perform the DSC experiment on the waxy crude oil to obtain the which are much different than that on 80
81 grids. Therefore,
correlation between wax precipitation amount gs and oil tempera- in this research, all the results are based on grid system of
ture T, as Eq. (18) shows [8,9]. 100
101.

Table 2
Properties of different materials [3,4,8,9].

Material q cp k b l L
kg/m3 J/(kg °C) W/(m °C) °C1 Pas J/kg
Waxy crude oil 869 2100 0.14 7.53
104 Eq. (15) 2.0
105
Air 1.25 1009 0.025 3.7
103 1.77
105 –
Wax crystal 869 2100 0.14 – +1 2.0
105
Steel 7860 475 46 – +1 –
Soil 1700 753 1.6 – +1 –
Insulating layer 55 1880 0.02 – +1 –
462 M. Wang et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 136 (2019) 457–469
Fig. 3. Comparison of the results calculated on different meshes: (a) oil temperature; (b) heat flux on each time step.
Fig. 4. Comparison of the results calculated on different time step: (a) oil temperature; (b) heat flux on each time step.
Fig. 4 shows good consistency in both the core region temper-
ature and the heat flux based on the three different time steps.
However as with the profiles of average temperature, results
based on time step of 1.0 s and 2.0 s agree quite well with each
other, and both have some deviations from the result at time step
of 4.0 s. Therefore, in this research, time step of 2.0 s is finally
selected.
3.3.2. Model validation
In this subsection, the general model developed in this study is
validated by the experimental data. Literature review shows that
most of previous experiment researches are for 10
104 m3
double-plate floating roof tank. In our research, experiment mea-
surement is made on oil tank in northwestern and northeastern
region of China [4,32].
In this case, both oil tank radii are 40 m, liquid heights inside
the tanks are respectively 17.7 m and 19.44 m. The other informa-
tion can be found in Refs. [4,32]. Therefore, during validation, the
computational domains of the two tanks are discretized by the
same set of mesh. Grid systems for air layer, waxy crude oil
domain, soil and insulating layer are respectively 97
241,
160
241, 82
302 and 266
13, and the total number of grids
is 95504. Based on trial calculation, time step is selected as 5.0 s.
Model validation is performed by comparing experiment results
with numerical calculation results of the average oil temperature
at the gauge hatch (r = 38.7 m). From Fig. 5 it can be seen that
numerical results and experimental data agree well with each
other.
4. Results and discussion
4.1. Temperature drop and gelatinization characteristics in the tank
Temperature field in 1000 m3 single and double-plate floating
roof tanks at different moments are shown in Figs. 6 and 7. From
figures it can be seen that when waxy crude oil in the tank is not
totally gelled, there is a domain in both types of tank where oil
temperature keeps uniformly distributed as oil temperature drops.
This domain is named as the core region of the oil tank. While
when oil in the tank becomes fully gelled, obvious temperature
gradient is observed in the core area for both two tanks. The reason
for this phenomenon is that at the initial moment oil temperature
in the tank is 30 °C, while both the atmosphere and the soil surface
are only 1 °C. Heat transfers from oil towards the atmosphere and
soil, forming turbulent natural convection in middle-upper region
of the tank, which is named the core area. At the same time, the
bottom region of the tank presents a layer-distributed tempera-
ture, as shown in Figs. 6(a), (b) and 7(a)–(c). As time goes on, oil
temperature in the core area decreases continuously. When oil
temperature drops to below wax appearance point (27 °C), wax
crystals begin to precipitate. When oil temperature drops to below
thixotropy appearance point (23 °C), the precipitated waxy crystals
cross-link with each other and wax crystal porous media forms.
Waxy crude oil begins to gel and the core area shows obvious tem-
perature gradient, see Figs. 6(e) and 7(e).
Although oil temperature distributions in single and double-
plate floating roof tanks are similar to some extent, there are also
 M. Wang et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 136 (2019) 457–469 463

13 43

present 42 present
Li et al. [4] Xu [32]
12
41

40
11
39

10 38
0 100 200 300 400 500 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700
time (h) time (h)
(a) (b)
Fig. 5. Comparison of the present results with experimental data [4,32]: (a) oil tank located in northwestern region of China; (b) oil tank located in northeastern region of
China.

Fig. 6. Temperature distribution in 1000 m3 single-plate floating roof oil tank: (a) 10 h; (b) 50 h; (c) 200 h; (d) 300 h; (e) 400 h; (f) 600 h.

some differences in temperature drop and gelling process. (1) Oil much smaller, which is only 0.007 °C/h. (2) During gelling, core
temperature drop rates largely differ. In single-plate floating roof region variation process is different. For double-plate floating roof
tank, oil temperature in the tank presents an averaged drop rate tank, the core area always exists and is located in the middle-upper
of 0.018 °C/h, while in double-plate floating roof tank, the rate is part of the tank, as shown in Fig. 7(a)–(c). In single-plate case, at
464 M. Wang et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 136 (2019) 457–469
Fig. 7. Temperature distribution in 1000 m3 double-plate floating roof oil tank: (a) 10 h; (b) 200 h; (c) 700 h; (d) 900 h; (e) 1200 h; (f) 1600 h.
the initial moment, the core area is also in the middle-upper region
of the tank, as shown in Fig. 6(a)–(b). After 200 h temperature drop,
the core area covers the whole tank, as shown in Fig. 6(c). The rea-
son is that the double-plate floating roof tank has two steel layers
and an air layer between the plates, as shown in Fig. 1. With a bet-
ter heat insulation effect, waxy crude oil in double-plate floating
roof tank flows weakly and steadily, with turbulent natural con-
vection remains in middle-upper part and heat conduction in bot-
tom part. Comparatively the single-plate floating roof tank has a
high rate of heat exchange with environment. Turbulent natural
convection in middle-upper part of the tank and heat conduction
at the bottom only exists together at the initial period of tempera-
ture drop. As the oil temperature drops, turbulent natural convec-
tion develops towards the tank bottom until it covers the whole
tank after 200 s from the beginning, and a layer-shape temperature
distribution disappears. At 300 s, the layer-distribution of the tem-
perature field at tank bottom appears again due to the small tem-
perature difference between waxy crude oil and environment and
stable temperature distribution in air layer on tank roof and soil
under the tank bottom, as Fig. 6(e) shows.
When crude temperature drops below Tt, wax crude oil appears
as a porous structure built by wax crystals and liquid oil filling in it.
Flow strength of the liquid oil in the porous structure is largely
weakened. At this time, for single-plate floating roof tank, heat dis-
sipated from tank roof and tank wall can’t be quickly supplied from
the core region due to the weak natural convection of liquid oil,
forming irregular interfaces between cold and hot oil regions,
shown as Fig. 6(e). While for double-plate floating roof tank, series
vortexes of air fill the air layer on tank top, which are clockwise
alternative with anticlockwise, as Fig. 8(a) shows. Heat transfers
from waxy crude oil through the air layer inside tank roof to the
atmosphere. Thus there appears obvious interface between cold
and hot oil region in tank roof region, as Fig. 7(e) shows.
The flow and heat transfer of the air layer on tank roof in
double-plate floating roof oil tank are studied in this subsection
due to the significant influence on the heat transfer between waxy
crude oil and atmosphere. Fig. 8 shows the air temperature, veloc-
ity vector and stream function after 700 h temperature drop in
1000 m3 double-plate floating roof oil tank. It can be seen that
the whole air layer is filled with vortexes, which are alternatively
positive and negative and the maximum air velocity is about
0.4 m/s, as shown in Fig. 8(a).
In Fig. 9, waxy crude oil temperature fields, velocity vector
fields and stream function for both single and double-plate floating
roof tanks are shown when oil temperature in core area is 23.5 °C.
In these two types oil tank, flow fields are largely different. In
 M. Wang et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 136 (2019) 457–469 465

double-plate floating roof oil tank, turbulent natural convection

T( ) u=0.5m/s mainly locates in middle-upper part of the tank, with the maxi-
0.0 2.0 4.0 6.0 8.0 10.0 12.0 14.0 16.0
8.5 mum velocity only being 0.02 m/s. On tank bottom, waxy crude
oil is almost gelled and obvious temperature gradient can be
observed.
As mentioned above, in the process of oil temperature drop,
3 4 5 6 there is a core region in the tank where oil temperature is approx-
(a) imately uniform. Therefore, variations of the oil temperature in the
core area and average temperature of the waxy crude oil with time
stream are investigated respectively to study the oil temperature drop
-1.2E-01 -9.2E-02 -6.7E-02 -4.3E-02 -1.8E-02 6.7E-03 3.1E-02 characteristics in the core area and the whole oil temperature drop
8.5
characteristics in the tank. The average oil temperature and oil
temperature at (3.75 m, 3.33 m) (x, r) are chosen and plotted
against time, as Fig. 10 shows.
3 4 5 6 Generally speaking, average oil temperature drop tendencies in
(b) single and double-plate floating roof tanks are similar. However, as
the oil temperature drop in core area, the distributions are also
Fig. 8. Air temperature and velocity vector distributions (a) and stream function (b) similar for both tanks, with two turning points, wax appearance
at 700 h. temperature (27 °C) and thixotropy appearance temperature
(23 °C). When oil temperature reaches wax appearance point,
single-plate floating roof oil tank, turbulent natural convection wax crystal precipitates, meanwhile the latent heat releases due
exists in the whole region of the tank, with the maximum velocity to wax precipitation in this process, which leads to a slower tem-
being 0.05 m/s, and oil temperature is nearly uniform. However, in perature drop process. Moreover, when oil temperature drops to

Fig. 9. Oil temperature and velocity vector (I) and stream function (II) in 1000 m3 floating roof oil tank: (a) single-plate floating roof oil tank at 200 h; (b) double-plate floating
roof oil tank at 700 h.
466 M. Wang et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 136 (2019) 457–469
Fig. 10. Variations of oil temperature with time in 1000 m3 floating roof oil tank.
below thixotropy appearance point, wax crystal porous media
forms and the movement of waxy crude oil is weakened largely,
which causes a step-like temperature drop along with time. The
numerical simulation results correspond will with the experiment
data [25].
In Fig. 11, oil temperature distribution along the tank height is
given for the radial position of r = 5.52 m. Overall, oil temperature
in middle-upper region of the tank is high, while oil temperature
near tank roof and tank bottom is low. As analyzed above, the
region having uniform temperature is the core area, corresponding
to the upright parts of the profiles in Fig. 11. For the single-plate
floating roof oil tank, when the gelling hasn’t started, the core area
almost covers the whole region of the tank, as shown in Fig. 11(a)
for 10–200 h. However, for the double-plate floating roof oil tank,
the core area is only located in the middle-upper part of the tank,
while tank bottom has obvious temperature gradient, see Fig. 11(b)
10–600 h. When waxy crude oil inside the tank is gelled, oil exists
as wax crystal porous media and heat transfers to atmosphere and
soil through tank roof and tank bottom respectively. Specially
speaking, in single-plate floating roof tank, heat is mainly dissi-
pated through the steel layer on tank roof, while in double-plate
floating roof tank, heat transfer mainly happens at tank bottom
and the oil temperature at tank bottom is much lower than any
other area.
4.2. Gel oil growth
When oil temperature is below thixotropy appearance point,
wax crystal porous media forms, which would weakens the flowa-
bility of waxy crude oil significantly. Therefore, in this study, thix-
Fig. 11. Oil temperature distribution on r = 5.52 m in 1000 m3 floating roof oil tank: (a) single-plate floating roof oil tank; (b) double-plate floating roof oil tank.
otropy appearance point is assumed to be the critical temperature
of the formation of gel oil.
It is worth mentioning that there is no gelled oil near tank roof
and tank bottom at the beginning. Gelled oil is formed during the
process of storage. Fig. 12 shows the variation of gelled oil thick-
ness on tank roof and tank bottom for both single and double-
plate floating roof oil tanks. The growth of gelled oil in both types
oil tank at the roof and bottom appears to be exponential. Gelled
oil layer firstly appears near tank bottom, where the growth is
slow. On the contrary, formation of gelled oil layer near tank roof
is relatively late, but the growth speed is larger.
Due to different roof type, the growth of gelled oil layer in single
and double-plate floating roof oil tanks presents several differ-
ences. For single-plate floating roof tank, at the initial stage of tem-
perature drop, heat transfers from waxy crude oil to soil through
the steel layer on tank bottom, driving the formation of gelled oil
layer on tank bottom. According to the condition in this study, after
temperature drop of 5 h, the gelled oil layer reaches a thickness of
3.2 mm. Furthermore, under the effect of turbulent natural convec-
tion, gelled oil layer breaks up and melts gradually due to scouring
by relative hotter waxy crude oil in the core region of the tank, and
after temperature drop of 45 h, the gelled oil on tank bottom disap-
pears. As the decreases of the oil temperature continuously inside
the tank, gelled oil appears again with a rapid growth rate, as
shown in Fig. 12(a). For double-plate floating roof oil tank, gelled
oil grows following a fluctuating profile, with higher growth rate
as temperature drops. During temperature drop process, the atmo-
sphere temperature fluctuates periodically, which leads to the fluc-
tuating temperature difference between waxy crude oil and
atmosphere and thus a fluctuating of turbulent natural convection
process.
4.3. Variations of the heat flux
In this subsection, variations of the heat flux on tank roof, tank
bottom and tank wall in 1000 m3 single and double-plate floating
roof oil tanks are studied, as shown in Fig. 13. From figure it can
be seen that the heat transfer process on tank roof and bottom
for the two types of tank are similar. According to the condition
in this study, for tank bottom, at initial moment heat transfers
from waxy crude oil to soil rapidly due to the large temperature
difference, and the maximum heat flux reaches up to 5.3 kW.
Meanwhile, heat flux on tank bottom decreases rapidly due to
the formation of the stable temperature gradient, as shown in
Figs. 6 and 7. When the temperature drop time exceeds 240 h
and 650 h respectively for single and double-plate floating roof
oil tanks, heat flux on tank bottom is below 0.15 kW. As far as heat
 M. Wang et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 136 (2019) 457–469 467

Fig. 12. Gel oil growth at r = 5.52 m on tank roof and tank bottom in 1000 m3 floating roof oil tank: (a) single-plate floating roof oil tank; (b) double-plate floating roof oil tank.

Fig. 13. Variations of the heat flux on tank roof, tank bottom and tank wall in 1000 m3 floating roof oil tank: (a) single-plate floating roof oil tank; (b) double-plate floating
roof oil tank.

transfer through tank wall is concerned, due to the existence of the From Fig. 14 it can be observed that the total heat in both two
insulating layer on both tanks, heat flux is relatively slow, and the tanks increases monotonically and in this process the increase rate
mean value around 0.15 kW. drops gradually. The average heat fluxes for single and double-
The main difference in heat transfer process between single and plate floating roof tanks are respectively 1.49 kW and 0.59 kW.
double-plate floating roof oil tanks lies in the heat transfer on tank Especially, a fast increase stage of the total heat can be seen from
roof. From Fig. 13, it can be seen that heat flux on tank roof in Fig. 14 at the early temperature drop period for both tanks. This
single-plate floating roof oil tank is much higher than that in phenomenon can be explained as follows. Initially, there is a large
double-plate one. Specifically, according to the condition in this temperature difference between the oil and the soil, which drives a
study, in case of single-plate floating roof tank, when the temper- rapid heat transfer from the oil to the soil, with an instantaneous
ature drop time is less than 210 h, waxy crude oil is not completely heat flux over 5.0 kW, as shown in Fig. 13. As time goes on, the heat
gelled, and turbulent natural convection is dominated in the tank. flux through the tank bottom reduces while the heat fluxes
At this moment, the maximum heat flux on tank roof reaches as
high as 2.0 kW. When gel oil begin to appear on tank roof, heat
transfers through wax crystal porous media to environment (sim-
ilar to heat conduction), and the maximum heat flux being 0.7 kW.
For double-plate floating roof tank, an air layer with a thickness of
1.0 m is contained between the double steel plates, indicating a
slower heat transfer process with the maximum heat flux being
0.4 kW. Furthermore, heat flux on tank roof, tank bottom and tank
wall fluctuates periodically with time, which is caused by the peri-
odical fluctuating of atmosphere temperature during storage.
The heat of waxy crude oil is transferred through tank roof, tank
bottom and tank wall respectively to the air layer, soil and insulat-
ing layer and finally to the atmosphere. Thus, studying the heat
transfer characteristics at different parts of the tank has great guid-
ance meaning to the design of tank heat insulation. Variations of
the total heat at different time instants are studied against the
temperature drop time. The results are given in Fig. 14 for both sin- Fig. 14. Variations of the total heat against temperature drop time.
gle and double-plate floating roof tanks.
468 M. Wang et al. / International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 136 (2019) 457–469
through tank roof and tank wall increase gradually. Thus the total
heat appears to rise gradually for the subsequent temperature drop
period.
5. Conclusions
A general model of the temperature drop and gelatinization
process for waxy crude oil in single and double-plate floating roof
oil tanks is established in this paper with the consideration of the
variations of the oil state and rheological behavior. Taking 1000 m3
single and double-plate floating roof oil tanks as examples, the
temperature drop and gelatinization characteristics of waxy crude
oil are studied and the gel oil growth and heat transfer character-
istics are analyzed. The following conclusions are obtained:
(1) There are many similarities in temperature drop and gelling
processes in these two tanks. Firstly, there is a core area in
both tanks where oil temperature is approximately uniform
due to turbulent natural convection when oil is not gelled.
When waxy crude oil is completely gelled, heat transfers
through wax crystal porous media to environment (similar
to heat conduction), and obvious temperature gradient
appears in the core areas of both tanks. Secondly, the gelled
oil layer on tank roof and tank bottom for both tanks pre-
form an exponential growth. Thirdly, single-plate floating
roof tank has a similar heat transfer process on tank bottom
and tank wall with double-plate one. And both tanks have
fluctuating heat fluxes on tank roof along with the storage
time.
(2) There are also obvious differences in temperature drop and
gelling processes between these two tanks due to the differ-
ent heat insulation capacity on tank roof. Firstly, tempera-
ture drop in single-plate floating roof oil tank is much
faster, and the average rate is as large as 0.018 °C/h, which
is only 0.007 °C/h in double-plate floating roof oil tank
according to the condition in this study. Secondly, the
growth of gelled oil is different. In double-plate floating roof
oil tank, gelled oil layer keeps a fluctuating growth, and gen-
erally the growth becomes faster as oil temperature drops. In
single-plate floating roof oil tank, gelled oil layer succes-
sively goes through three stages with time. At the first stage,
the gelled oil layer grows quickly, and then diminishes
slowly until the disappearance. At the second stage, there
is no gelled oil layer. At the third stage, the gelled oil layer
grows rapidly again. Thirdly, heat flux on tank roof in
single-plate floating roof oil tank is much larger than that
in double-plate floating roof oil tank. In single-plate floating
roof oil tank, the maximum heat flux on tank roof is over
2.0 kW, and the average heat flux after gelling keeps around
at 0.7 kW. While in double-plate floating roof oil tank, the
largest heat flux is only 0.4 kW, and the average heat flux
after gelling is only 0.27 kW in this study. On the whole,
the total average heat fluxes of single and double-plate float-
ing roof tanks are respectively 1.49 kW and 0.59 kW.
Conflict of interest
The authors declared that there is no conflict of interest.
Acknowledgement
This research is supported by the Fundamental Research Funds
for the Central Public Welfare Research Institutes of China (Grant
Nos. TKS180403, TKS160223), National Natural Science Foundation
of China (No. 51606117) and the Project of Construction of Innova-
tive Teams and Teacher Career Development for Universities and
Colleges under Beijing Municipality (No. IDHT20170507).
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