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Wax precipitation and deposition in crude oils can produce problems in production and transportation operations. To gain an understanding of deposits formed in a pipeline transporting an intermediate type crude oil in an arctic/subarctic environment, comparisons of several types of crude oil solid deposits from the Trans Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) and precipitated waxes present in the TAPS mix crude oil were developed. An extended high-temperature gas chromatography (HTGC) method was used for the determination of the solids composition, and is described in this paper. The HTGC method uses a longer capillary column to obtain improved resolution of higher carbon number groups. The method also provides quantification of n-alkane and non-n-alkane content within each single carbon number group. A comparison of the ratio of n-alkane: non-n-alkane for each single carbon number (SCN) between the parent crude oil and the crude oil solids is used to identify the amount of liquid crude oil occluded in the crude oil solid. A reference wax is analyzed using the described method to demonstrate the precision and accuracy of the method.

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