Asphaltene Solutions Are Not Adequately Described by Popular Models of Solid Suspensions

The structural parameters of asphaltene nanoparticles are analyzed by employing theoretical models for the properties of solid suspensions in ideal fluids with unvarying composition. This approach ignores the coexistence of colloidally and molecularly dispersed species in the typical asphaltene suspensions used for viscosity and other studies. Molecular dispersed species effectively become parts of the solvent inducing its nonideality, as demonstrated experimentally