Characterization of a heavy oil–propane system in the presence or absence of asphaltene precipitation

Abstract

When a light hydrocarbon solvent is injected into a heavy oil reservoir under a sufficiently high reservoir pressure, asphaltene precipitation occurs so that the heavy oil is in situ deasphalted during a hydrocarbon solvent-based heavy oil recovery process. The physicochemical properties of this in situ deasphalted heavy oil are rather different from those of the original crude oil in the heavy oil reservoir. In this paper, a heavy oil sample is saturated with a typical light hydrocarbon solvent (i.e., propane) under different saturation pressures in a see-through windowed high-pressure saturation cell. The heavy oil–propane system is characterized by measuring and comparing several important physicochemical properties of the propane-saturated heavy oil samples under different saturation pressures and the flashed-off heavy oil samples, such as the solubility, oil-swelling factor, density, viscosity, asphaltene content, hydrogen and carbon aromaticities. When the heavy oil is saturated with propane at P ≤ 780 kPa and T = 20.8 °C, there is no observable asphaltene precipitation and deposition under a microscope camera. The respective properties of the propane-saturated heavy oil samples taken from the upper and lower parts of the saturation cell are measured and found to be essentially the same within the experimental errors so that the entire system is considered to be almost homogeneous. If the saturation pressure is increased to P = 850 kPa, strong asphaltene precipitation occurs and some large asphaltene particles are deposited onto the bottom of the saturation cell. In this case, the heavy oil is deasphalted and the flashed-off heavy oil has lower density, viscosity, asphaltene content, hydrogen and carbon aromaticities than those of the original heavy crude oil.