Interfacial Activity of Characterized Middle Eastern Asphaltenes

Abstract

Asphaltene molecules play a pivotal role in reservoir fluid characterization. As a result of the high complexity of these molecules, there is still an active debate in the scientific community about their physicochemical properties and the structural elucidation, despite a myriad of published studies. It is commonly agreed that asphaltenes, a fraction of reservoir crude oils, exhibit strong interfacial activity and cause many production challenges. In this work, the structure and interfacial activity of 11 characterized asphaltene samples, extracted from 11 different reservoir crude oils from the Middle Eastern region, were analyzed using Raman spectroscopy and pendent drop tensiometry. Additionally, contact angle measurements and atomic force microscopy (AFM) were executed on selected samples. The Raman analysis revealed that the 11 asphaltene batches have similar structural characteristics with the annulated core ranging from 1.43 to 1.66 nm in diameter, which corresponds to 6–7 fused aromatic rings. In...