Designing a digital twin of a crude oil heating system

This article is devoted to the design of a digital twin of a crude oil heating system. For the successful functioning of the oil industry, it is very important to control the parameters of ongoing processes and indicators of devices and equipment involved in the production process. Every year, there is an increasing automation of the extraction and transportation processes to detect temperature changes in a timely manner. Lowering the oil temperature to the crystallization temperature of the paraffins in its composition is a favorable factor for the formation of asphalt-resin-paraffin deposits on the inner wall of the pipeline, which may be a factor that first reduces the productivity of the pipeline, and then completely prevents it. Therefore, the issues of the relevance of integrating the technology of digital deposits come to the fore. The aim of the work is to study various techniques and technologies to prevent the appearance and removal of asphalt-resin-paraffin deposits and, as a result, to develop a mathematical model of the temperature field of an oil pipeline and conduct an experiment simulating the oil flow inside the pipeline to measure the temperature of the liquid. In order to solve the tasks set, the article analyzes the state of the oil industry, examines the issues of ensuring industrial safety measures and limiting the harmful effects of the oil production on the environment. The article describes the characteristics and chemical composition of asphalt-resin-paraffin deposits, the causes of their occurrence and the mechanism of formation, methods of combating asphalt-resin-paraffin deposits. As a result, a digital twin model of the crude oil heating system was developed, an experiment was conducted that proved the system operability and confirmed its ability to respond to changes in the temperature field of the oil emulsion inside the pipeline. For citation: Stolbovskaya N.V., Esipova K.I., Pasternak S.N., Turovskaya L.G., Davydov T.G. Designing a digital twin of a crude oil heating system. Bulletin of the Tomsk Polytechnic University. Geo Assets Engineering, 2026, vol. 337, no. 7, pp. 113-124. https://doi.org/10.18799/24131830/2026/7/5027