A comprehensive review on the significant tools of asphaltene investigation. Analysis and characterization techniques and computational methods

After years of research into the heavy components of crude oil, asphaltenes are still one of the most complex and unknown organic molecules. During these years, asphaltene has been the subject of research by chemists, chemical engineers, petroleum engineers, materials engineers and other sciences from various angles. Abstract of research on asphaltenes is a decoding of their molecular structures which is the key to solving the puzzle of predicting the specific properties of asphaltenes, such as self-association, deposition, and surface activity in crude oil. In this regard, a variety of laboratory techniques have been used to identify asphaltenes in the field of the molecular weight, chemical structure, architecture and physico-chemical properties such as MASS, UV-VIS, NMR, EPR, ESR, FL, IR, RA, XPS, UL, XRD, SAS, GC, AFM, STM, TEM and etc. In parallel with molecular characterization research, engineers in this field have made great efforts to predict the properties of asphaltenes to prevent the economic damage caused by the deposition and formation of w/o emulsions in the production cycle (Oil well reservoir, production, transmission, storage, refinery, etc.). Numerous modeling and simulation methods have been used to investigate these topics. In this article, a comprehensive review of laboratory techniques for the identification of asphaltene molecules with a brief introduction of these techniques and the most popular and most practical computational models for predicting the properties of asphaltene based on Solubility theory and colloidal theory Has been introduced. Also Recent molecular simulation methods for the study of asphaltenes, such as Monte Carlo and especially molecular dynamics (MD) and useful tools for the study of asphaltene have been reviewed.

Automated summary

Asphaltenes, as one of the most complex and unknown organic molecules in crude oil, have attracted wide research interest in the petroleum field. Through the application of laboratory techniques, scientists are trying to understand the molecular structure of asphaltenes and predict their properties to prevent deposition and emulsion issues in the production process.