Probing Flocculant-Induced Asphaltene Precipitation via NMR Imaging: from Model Toluene-Asphaltene Systems to Natural Crude Oils

Resumo

An nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) imaging approach for studying flocculant-induced asphaltene precipitation processes is introduced in this report. Unlike commonly accepted techniques, which primarily measure aggregation processes on the submicron scale (the level of asphaltene molecules and their aggregates), NMR imaging demonstrates the capability to obtain new useful information about bulk system behavior on the macro scale. To reveal the capabilities of the method, the model toluene-asphaltene system and two samples of natural crude oils with different chemical composition and physical properties (such as asphaltene content and density) were employed for experiments. The process of colloidal suspension formation and two different patterns of its evolution were observed depending on both the asphaltene content and the flocculant concentration. In the first pattern, the flocculant-induced precipitation leads to the slow uniform compacting of the suspension and descent of the sedimentation front, whereas the second pattern is characterized by sediment accumulation and the upwards drift of the front. It was found that the behavior of the precipitated asphaltenes in the model system correlates well with those observed in natural crude oils. The results achieved in this work are in agreement with the data obtained previously via other techniques. Thus, NMR imaging proved to be an efficient method for probing flocculant-induced precipitation in crude oils.