Abstract
Oil-exposed surfaces are susceptible to carbonaceous deposits (CDs). In turn, deposits are responsible for fouling, compromising performance and reducing profitability across the hydrocarbon value chain. An understanding of the deposition behaviour of these organic molecules is therefore imperative. In this paper we address the question of understanding the deposition in upstream operation, where the CDs are known to be asphaltenes, the heaviest fraction of oil. Systematic characterisation of fouled oil-exposed surfaces constitutes an initial step towards that direction and it is a challenging task in itself. We demonstrate the use of Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) to map surface mechanical properties and how they can be used to determine differences between deposit types. We also demonstrate that the use of an adhesion inhibitor (AI) has a dramatic effect not only on the morphology but also on the mechanical properties of asphaltene deposits.
Highlights
in all situations where hydrocarbons come in contact with surfaces
they lead to a reduction of performance or throughput
able to mitigate against them. A wide variety of characterisation techniques have been employed in recent years to explore these deposits including electron microscopy
Summary
Carbonaceous deposits (CDs) are to be found in all situations where hydrocarbons come in contact with surfaces, be it oil pipelines, re nery components or car engines. Most literature reports on the use of AFM to investigate oil-exposed surfaces have been limited to the standard modes of AFM imaging – tapping or contact mode.[1,3,5,10,11,12,13,14,15,16] Such imaging and subsequent analysis can generally only provide simple morphological information of the surface including the size of prominent features and the roughness, without any quantitative information regarding the nature of such deposits
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