On the development of experimental methods to determine the rates of asphaltene precipitation, aggregation, and deposition

Despite the efforts throughout the last few decades, asphaltene deposition remains as one of the greatest challenges in the petroleum industry. In this work, we present a comprehensive series of experimental studies to better understand the asphaltene precipitation, aggregation, and deposition mechanisms. Here, we introduce a simple method to determine the amount of precipitated asphaltene using NIR spectroscopy measurements without the implementation of calibration curves. Moreover, the kinetics of asphaltene precipitation and aggregation is simultaneously investigated by a newly developed, fast, and reliable NIR spectroscopy technique. In the new method, only less than 2 ml of sample is required for each experiment. In addition, unlike gravimetric techniques, less time consuming and labor-intensive measurements can be performed. In addition, the temperature can be controlled; hence, experiments can be conducted to evaluate the effects of temperature and the driving force on the kinetics of asphaltene precipitation and aggregation. Subsequently, the quantified precipitated asphaltene amount can be used to calibrate the precipitation and aggregation kinetic parameters of the asphaltene deposition model. The results obtained from the kinetics experiments facilitate in establishing a function to scale the precipitation kinetic parameter from laboratory-scale experiments to real field high-pressure high-temperature conditions. Additionally, a multi-section stainless steel packed bed column is proposed to study asphaltene deposition at high temperature and under dynamic conditions. In these experiments, the amount of deposited asphaltene is directly quantified. The results from the packed bed column deposition tests can be used to calibrate the deposition kinetic parameter of the asphaltene deposition model.