Development of a New Temperature-Dependent Viscosity Model for Crude Oils

The objective of this study is to develop a more accuratemodelfor predicting the dynamic viscosity of a wide range of crude oilsat different temperatures. The dynamic viscosities of four Kuwaiticrude oils and a Maya heavy crude oil with an API gravity range of11.3-26.5 were measured over a temperature range of 25-150 & DEG;C, and then the obtained data were used to compare and evaluatethe six major empirical temperature-dependent viscosity models reportedin the literature. According to the temperature-viscosity correlation,a new empirical temperature-dependent viscosity model was first proposedfor crude oils. The linear regression analysis and the statistic deviationanalysis were conducted in comparison of the new temperature-dependentviscosity model with the six existing models. Deviation of the variousmodels for the five different crude oils was calculated and discussedin detail. The results show that the new model displays the best correlationperformance, giving the smallest average relative deviation of 3.0%,in comparison with the six existing models.