Modeling of the Asphaltene Onset Pressure from Few Experimental Data: A Comparative Evaluation of the Hirschberg Method and the Cubic-Plus-Association Equation of State

Abstract

Asphaltene onset pressure (AOP) is a key parameter to determine the flow assurance of live oils. In this study, the capabilities of the cubic-plus-association (CPA) equation of state (EoS) and the Hirschberg method of calculating the AOP of five oils are compared to a new approach using few experimental data. Two experimental data points of AOP and only one of the bubble pressure (BP) are required for adequate parametrization of both models. The number of non-zero binary interaction parameters needed for the CPA EoS is reduced to only four binary pairs. In the Hirschberg method, the BP calculations were performed with the Soave–Redlich–Kwong EoS. For all oils, the CPA EoS provided lower deviations for both AOP and BP. To achieve a good correlation, the Hirschberg method requires the use of AOP experimental data to calculate the difference between the liquid-phase solubility parameter and the asphaltene solubility parameter. Similarly, CPA EoS requires the calculation of the cross-associating energy parame...