Multi-alkylated aromatic amides amphiphiles effectively stabilize the associated asphaltene particles in crude oil

Abstract

As an economic and efficient method, asphaltene dispersants are widely used to inhibit the precipitation of asphaltenes in the crude oil tank. In this study, a series of multi-alkylated aromatic amides (MAA) amphiphiles containing benzene rings and a different number of alkyl side chains were synthesized and evaluated as asphaltene dispersants for the Saudi crude oil. After adding 500 ppm MAA-3, the initial flocculation point of the oil sample is significantly increased from 42.48% to 70.94%, the size of asphaltene aggregates is reduced from 3.99 ± 0.2 μm to 1.45 ± 0.2 μm, and the viscosity of the oil sample has increased by 21.77%. The influence of the number of alkyl side chains on the performance of asphaltene dispersants was also studied. The result shows that increasing the number of the alkyl side chain is beneficial to improve the performance of dispersant, and the MAA has the best performance of dispersing asphaltenes at the number of alkyl side chains of 3 (MAA-3). The molecular simulation (MS) further verified the experimental results from the perspective of interaction energy.