ARTICLE NO. CS975177 Effects of Asphaltene Aggregation in Model Heptane±Toluene Mixtures on Stability of Water-in-Oil Emulsions

• Main Authors: Joseph D. Mclean, Peter K. Kilpatrick
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 1997
• Subjects: Alaska North Slope; north slope; Alaska
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.497.8428; http://www.che.ncsu.edu/kilpatrick/papers/jcis.196.23.pdf

brought together what we thought and what has been shown As part of an ongoing investigation into the stability of water- in many literature studies to be the primary contributors to in-crude oil emulsions, model oils have been utilized to further the solubility state of asphaltenes which in turn should have probe the effects of crude solvency as well as speci®c resin±asphal-a pronounced effect on the stability of these emulsions. tene interactions on emulsion stability. These model oils were con- Asphaltenes are in fact reported to stabilize emulsions tostructed by dissolving varying amounts of resins and/or asphal-the greatest extent when they are at or near the point oftenes in a mixture of heptane and toluene. The resins and asphal-precipitation (2–4). It is also well known that the solvencytenes used in this study were isolated from four different crude state of petroleum asphaltenes is primarily governed by theirtypesÐArab Berri (AB), Arab Heavy (AH), Alaska North Slope interactions with the resins and the surrounding crude me-(ANS), and San Joaquin Valley (SJV) Ðand characterized in a previous study using heptane precipitation of the asphaltenes fol- dium (5–13). In our conceptual model, we proposed that lowed by an extrographic separation of the resins from silica gel. these interactions are dominated and determined by the Asphaltenes dissolved in heptol at concentrations of just 0.5 % were availability of solvating resins, the extent of hydrogen bond-shown to generate emulsions which were even more stable than ing between the asphaltenes and resins, and the aromatic those generated from their respective whole crude oils. Some types solvency of the resins and of the saturates and aromatics in