Using Focused Beam Laser Reflectance Measurements To Determine Asphaltene Aggregation Stability

Abstract

Currently, the lack of high-quality crude oils has motivated the common exploitation of low-quality crude oils with asphaltene instability that can generate plugging problems during extraction or processing. Therefore, the development of characterization techniques to easily determine this instability is becoming increasingly important. This paper investigates the use of focused beam laser reflectance measurement as a technique to determine the asphaltene aggregation onset, kinetics, and size-related parameters. Thus, two crude oils (D09 and D10) and three distillation cuts (190+, 370+, and 565+) of D10 with unstable asphaltenes were tested. The results were correlated with those obtained by other techniques, such as microscopy, to demonstrate the applicability of this method. Moreover, three commercial additives (AA32, AA36, and FX2090) were studied to explore their action in shifting onset when they were used as inhibitors. According to the results, there seemed to be a relation between the basicity of inhibitors and their ability to shift the onset of aggregation in acid oils, while their size remained the same or increased for inhibited asphaltenes.