Enhancement the Properties of Local Crude Oil using DE-asphalting Process

Abstract

Asphaltene precipitation is one of the main hitches in the oil sector through the production and refining stages that causes real damages every year. The object of the present work is to study the effect of the deasphalting process of crude oils using different concentrations (5, 10, and 15 wt.%) of n-heptane as a solvent, the experiments were done at a laboratory scale. The deasphalting process quality was based on the sulfur content, conradson carbon residue, density, API, and kinematic viscosity. The results have been shown that the deasphalting process quality was enhanced with increasing weight fraction of added n-heptane, the API value and kinematic viscosity were increased by about 37 and 19.5% respectively, while the density, conradson carbon residue, and sulfur content were decreased by about 5, 17 and 26.8% respectively when 15 wt.% of n-heptane was used, i.e. , the quality of deasphalting methods was enhanced with increased solvent concentrations.