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Investigation of Asphaltene Electro-deposition Under Dynamic Flow Conditions

Azari, Vahid | 2015

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  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 48484 (06)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Chemical and Petroleum Engineering
  6. Advisor(s): Taghikhani, Vahid; Ayatollahi, Shahabodin
  7. Abstract:
  8. Asphaltene, known as the heaviest and the most polar component of the crude oil, can precipitate because of the changes in the fluid condition such as pressure, temperature and composition. Asphaltene deposition causes major problems during oil production, in the form of fluid viscosity changes, wellbore damage and fouling in pipelines. The remediation of these problems is very expensive and needs to halt down the crude oil production. The use of electric field has been proposed recently as clean and cheap technique that could also be applied during the production period. In this work, the effect of electric potential on asphaltene precipitation in both static and dynamic modes has been investigated.Firstly, the effects of electric field on asphaltene aggregates were studied in transparent glass micromodels. Studying particles’ motion by a microscopic camera indicated that the effect of electric field on precipitation, strongly depends on the solution medium containing asphaltene particles.Normal alkanes has already been proposed to be added to the crude oil to mimic asphaltene precipitation. However, because of time consuming precipitation and low asphaltene content in deposited mass, more efforts were directed to find an efficient solvent. The results of this work demonstrated that the ratio of 50:50 Acetone and Heptane is the most efficient solution which resulted in much more asphaltene deposition on the cathode, while the opposite electrode remained completely clean. It was also shown that more than 90% of asphaltene content of the crude could be extracted, using this technique. Finally, the effect of different parameters in static and dynamic modes was investigated in glass micromodels, Flow loop, Electro-deposition cell and open channel system. The results were confirmed with the previous findings of the same work in the literature. Eventually a new method is proposed to prevent asphaltene deposition in the pipeline by applying electric field
  9. Keywords:
  10. Electric Potential ; Adsorption Kinetics ; Asphaltene Deposition ; Oil Pipelines ; Crude Oil ; Efficient Solvent ; Preventing Asphaltene Deposition

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