Any latest development in the world of asphaltene inhibitor and asphaltene in general?
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.
