Rapid and Simple Method for Measuring Petroleum Asphaltenes by the Centrifugation Technique

Abstract

Asphaltenes are heavy constituents of crude oil which affect the flow and viscosity of crude oil. They also stabilize water-in-oil emulsions which makes the separation process of water from oil during the primary treatment processes for crude oils more difficult and costly. Measuring asphaltenes has great importance, especially for crude oil production companies. Gravimetric and spectroscopic measurement methods are the basic techniques used by international references such as ASTM and IP. A new methodology has been introduced as a modification of ASTM D6560 gravimetric methodology by using the centrifugation technique in the separation of asphaltenes for different oil samples with the API gravity change from 17.4 (oil S1) to 39.8 (oil S5). The new methodology has the advantages of consuming little time, and multiple sample processing and can be done in the field and also in the lab. Moreover, it has good repeatability, reproducibility, and working range values compared to the reference gravimetric ASTM and IP methods. The repeatability of the new method was found to be 8.0% at its maximum value (S1, has a low asphaltene content), while the minimum value was found to be 3.75% (S10, has the highest asphaltene content). It was found that the maximum reproducibility value was 17.0% for the S1 sample and the minimum was 0.0% for S9 and S10 samples.