Any latest development in the world of asphaltene inhibitor and asphaltene in general?
Manfred Eigner
Owner, ME Consultancy Services (MECS) and Oil & Energy Consultant
Hi Mike, During my active career with Shell we did excellent research into the phenomena of asphaltenes and what they actually are. Lately, I did some work for Maersk Angola for developing a new oil field offshore Angola comprising an extensive literature study. What resulted was rather disappointing in terms of availability of suitable asphaltene inhibitors. They are not available yet, mainly because the chemical industry does not look for suitable products. All what is available is based on suitable surfactants but non of them based on the principle properties of asphaltenes. Having said this, to find a solution will be difficult anyway: asphaltenes vary a lot in composition. I reckon that the industry discovered that as well and are now aiming at quantifying the phase behavior of asphaltenes under a variety of production conditions, even commingling. In that way may be operators will be able to manage troublefree production when asphaltenes are present. Sorry for the bleak picture, but these are the facts, unless the chemical industry will make a dedicated effort.
Manfred
Tom McCartney
Director of Chemical Development
Hello Mike. The work on asphaltene inhibitor and dispersants have been ongoing for a number of companies. Not to blow my own horn (but if I don't who will) we have an excellent dispersant product that is highly effective in suspension of asphaltenes. Check out Paratene S627 on my website paratene.com - we have a number of case studies you may find interesting available.
Humberto Miguel Mejía Pérez
New Business Development IOS Group / Independent BD + Technologist + Systems Thinker
Tom is it possible to send me infor on the Paratene S627, I cannot access the website.
Manfred- excellent insight.
By any chance do you have a particle size distributions of the asphaltenes?
Manfred Eigner
Owner, ME Consultancy Services (MECS) and Oil & Energy Consultant
Humberto, Particle size of asphaltenes is difficult to give. Their size depends very much of their state of flocculation, so their original size in crude oil is very much different from when the precipitate from crude oil. To overcome this problem we started to mimic actual field conditions in coreflow experiments. There were a few surprises, mainly in the area of plugging phenomena. Can you me tell what you need the size distribution for.
Cheers Manfred
Humberto Miguel Mejía Pérez
New Business Development IOS Group / Independent BD + Technologist + Systems Thinker
Thanks Manfred- I am designing a filtration device to capture the asphaltenes, I have powdered particle distribution of asphaltenes that are free of resid, however, I want to have the "real" particle size distribution of the asphaltenes + resid, in the clean up process I need to recover as much resid as I can and therefore a chemical that can take on this problem is highly desirable
Scott Lamb
Corrosion Inhibitor Chemical Manufacturer
Since we're blowing horns, I'll offer a subjective note: Lonza produces a chemical that when added to an asphaltene dispersant packages may significantly improve performance. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any interest: scott.lamb@lonza.com.Now, to be completely objective:Asphaltenes, as Manfred recognised, vary a lot in composition. Thus there is no One Magic Bullet, and there is no single, "excellent dispersant product," although I am sure that successful case studies can be offered for any one product. Because there are such varied physical and chemical characteristics among different sources of asphaltenes, the effective dispersent often must be chosen by trial and error. Even then, the test method may not quite match the application, and what will work in the lab may not be effective in the field. Much of the research into asphaltenes is not designed to create a perfect dispersant, but rather simply to determine how to analyze the particular asphaltene, how to test dispersants under more applicable conditions, and how to measure test results. For these reasons, the "dedicated effort" from the chemical industry is unlikely to arise until someone can actually identify the quantity and quality of the chemicals that are needed in asphaltene dispersants.
Manfred Eigner
Owner, ME Consultancy Services (MECS) and Oil & Energy Consultant
Dear Scott, I would like to comment on your remarks. Although I am convinced that you are doing your utmost in finding a suitable chemical solution for the apparent asphaltene deposition problem in the industry, it is the approach of the chemical industry that bothers me most. As we all know that the problem is caused mainly by the pressure reduction, hence change in molar volume of the solute, the method of identifying a suitable chemical solution of the problem is inadequate. May be your company is following a new testing method that mimics the actual pressure reduction of live crude oil better then the existing ones. In that case I am keen to find out and my comments are premature. In my reply to Humberto I was only reflecting my experience that goes back to 2010-2012. And the result of my literature study was not very favorable. I would be very pleased if you want to share with me what your company is doing in this field.
Regards Manfred
Scott Lamb
Corrosion Inhibitor Chemical Manufacturer
Dear Manfred, I agree with your assessment, but think that perhaps by "chemical industry" we mean different things: I mean chemical manufactures capable of producing large scale volumes of molecules. You might mean chemical service companies that cater to the oil industry. In the first case, unless a chemical molecule is specifically identified, and the market is well defined, then it is difficult to imagine investing resources to produce the chemical. This has been, and still appears to be the status quo, as each geologic formation seems to produce its own, unique asphaltene for which only a customized dispersant formulation seems effective for each application.
Prof. Dr. Hans-Jörg Oschmann
Prof. II Colloid and polymer chemistry at NTNU
Hello Mike, interesting you only found such low performance in the literature. From an application viewpoint I always found asphaltenes significantly less challenging than wax since the new chemistries developed over the last ten years have been more than sufficient to deal with all asphaltenes problems I have encountered (including such severe environments as asphaltenes precipitation in de-ethanizers. Some products perform better then others on specific crudes but there is a couple of chemistries which so far have always come out amongst the top three. So I have never seen it as an "unmet need" for the industry. However there is still room for improvement on the application side. F.I. the MIC of asphaltenes inhibitors is still higher then for comparable Scale Inhibitors impacting squeeze lifetime.
