Stepwise Construction of An Asphaltene Precipitation Model

Abstract

In spite of the considerable efforts on the part of the scientific community to reach a well-defined physical model for asphaltene precipitation, this objective remains elusive: there are various, and mutually exclusive, schools of thought claiming to have built the right one. This situation is not strange, considering the complexity of the system and the vagueness with which asphaltenes are defined. Thus, the scientific literature continues to grow, each research group interpreting experimental results in the light of their preferred physical picture. It is shown how available empirical evidence has led us to set up a model able to describe the phase behavior of asphaltene solutions. The development of this model, which provides accurate predictions of asphaltene phase separation onset and quantity of asphaltenes deposited will be described. Applications of the developed model to two cases will illustrate the effectiveness of this approach.