Any latest development in the world of asphaltene inhibitor and asphaltene in general?
Manfred Eigner
Owner, ME Consultancy Services (MECS) and Oil & Energy Consultant
Dear professor Oschmann, It is good that the scientific world takes part in the discussions. I must point out that the chemical solutions offered to-day are not fully suitable. Especially not for offshore applications where we have to operate underwater completions, remotely operate valves etc., hence we can not accept a product that is will eliminate the problem of deposition for 60-70%. This is a no go as the deposition will take place and will hamper operation of underwater completions. In the field of scale inhibitors the world looks different as there are very effective products available. Moreover, there chemistry differs from what is being offered to counteract asphaltene precipitation.
Humberto Miguel Mejía Pérez
New Business Development IOS Group / Independent BD + Technologist + Systems Thinker
Dear Prof. Hans- Thanks for the note. Since Mike's post also inquires about asphaltene in general, I take the opportunity to interact with the Group in order to see if the conceptual design I am working on is valid. I am planning to deasphalt via mechanical filtration, the idea is not new, once the asphaltene flocs are trapped in the porous structure the idea is to see how to remove the resid content that binds to the asphaltene core in order to have recover as much resid as possible and mix with the DAO, this is where chemistry would come into play, I am considering Supercritical CO2 solvent extracting, ideally after that I would have "pure" asphaltenes granules trapped in the porrous stucture that I would oxidize to then afterward recover V and Ni from the water.
Mike Davis
Senior Technical Writer/Editor at OilfieldWiki.com
@Prof. Dr. Hans-Jörg Oschmann
The 60-70% reduction comes from experience as well. I agree, asphaltene is a little easier to treat than wax because wax inhibitor can also have poor performance, never 100%. asphaltene is also easier to dissolve than wax. A lot of times, asphaltene deposition is saved by high flow rate while wax doesn't benefit from it as much.
Prof. Dr. Hans-Jörg Oschmann
Prof. II Colloid and polymer chemistry at NTNU
Thanks Mike, I may have been lucky as I have a lot of cases where we had 100% efficiency (confirmed by monitoring/pigging inspection). All of them however are via continuous treatment below bubble point or early injection into incompatible crude (aliphatic condensate / black oil). Good point rgds the high flow rate / shear! This matches others experience as well and was one of the points brought up in the asphaltenes discussion at the recent SPE workshop on flow assurance in Norway (Tackling Tomorrow's Challenges 13 - 14 November 2013).
@Manfred - totally agree that 60-70% efficiency would be a killer for many subsea applications. That was why I was a bit surprised as many GoM projects rely on highly effective asphaltenes inhibition. Nobody can nowadays afford a "Prinos" asphaltenes disaster with wells blocking up quicker then you can look.
Prof. Dr. Hans-Jörg Oschmann
Prof. II Colloid and polymer chemistry at NTNU
Hi Humberto,
just to get this correct- do you want to focus primarily on the recovery of the metals? If yes you may be better of using iso-octane or similar medium mol. weight aliphatics as you will separate a lot of lower molecular weight colloids with the supercritical CO2. Also if you go with supercritical CO2 as opposed to liquid CO2 you will partially break down asphaltene agglomerates changing their properties.
Humberto Miguel Mejía Pérez
New Business Development IOS Group / Independent BD + Technologist + Systems Thinker
Thanks Prof Hans-
Actually v and Ni recovery is just an added bonus operation that has to be considered depending on the site economics.
The process would be run batch type
1- HO would cycle though a filtration media to capture the asphatenes.
2- Once asphaltenes are "trapped" a DAO (deasphalted oil) is obtained and removed.
3- The filtration media would be regenerated via SCCo2, other solvents to recover resid.
4- At this stage we should have solid asphaltene granules in the porous structure, that would be oxidized, if in water media the water would have the V and the Ni + other compunds such as S, etc.
Hope this helps
Win Robbins
Advanced Characterization - petroleum at Carmagen Engineering
Asphaltenes are not a compound or a class of compounds, they are an event cuased by solvent incompatibility. A solvent strength change can occur by pressure drop in the production tubing in the upstream or by blending with oils with different composition, i.e. both upstream and downstream. Asphaltene aggregation and precipitation causes problems in areas as diverse as emulsions in oil water separators/desalters, deposits & fouling in heat exchangers, poisoning& plugging hydroprocessing catalysts, and even creating hotspots in cokers. The "composition" and occurrence of asphaltenes has been studied extensively both academically and by the refining industry. Over my 30+ years working for Exxon, I followed processes have proposed for asphaltene and metals removal, including some of my own. In the past decade, more characterization has been achieved, but the problems remain.
Search the literature for papers by Mullins (Schlumberger) for discussions of size and pressure drop, Kilpatrick (Notre Dame) Rodgers (FSU-NationalHigh Field Magnet Lab) for compostion, Chapman (Rice) and Folger (U MIchigan) on phase behavior, Buckley(New Mexco Tech) and Jeff Creek (Chervon) on flow assurance, and Wiehe (Soluble Solutions) for discussion of solvent compatibility. All these individuals have been working closely with chemical service vendors in addressing asphaltene deposition. As Manfred has indicated, success is limited to specific cases because the "asphaltene event" can be induced by so many variables that there is no universal solution.
Manfred Eigner
Owner, ME Consultancy Services (MECS) and Oil & Energy Consultant
Thanks Win for your fine comments. They are 100% in line with my way of thinking about asphaltene deposition problems during oil production. There is no ideal solution and one has to look into each deposition problem separately. It may be possible to arrive at a solution for that particular case but the next problem may not fit. I hope you can agree to the new approach that people started to look into the phase behavior of native crude oil w.r.t. asphaltene solubility. By managing the phase behavior one may arrive at a more practical solution: how can we produce a life crude oil without initiating asphaltene precipitation or even deposition. Please note: I am using here two different physical phenomena on purpose: precipitation followed by deposition. Back in the eighties we were able to manage deposition thereby allowing precipitation (experience from wells in Kuwait). Mike was so kind to invite me to Oilfieldwiki to add some more practical information. I promised to do that, so watch the special page.
Win Robbins
Advanced Characterization - petroleum at Carmagen Engineering
Manfred,
A large number of excellent papers have been presented at the Petrophase conferences where many of the people I cited meet annually to discuss asphaltenes and other phase related problems. Meetings are annual; Petrophase 2014 will be in Galveston.
Growing agreement among attendees is that aggregation and adsorption are separate phenomena.
Ahmed Helmi
Adjunct Professor at Pharos University
Gents: Enjoyed very much the thoughts/insight in your discussion. I noticed mentioning the names of a few of the Biggies, EXXON & Shell, that some of you had been working in and faced/involved in the Asphaltenes' deposition problems. A thought came to my mind as I got to the last comment: If the Biggies have not yet met to set a joint R&D plan to find a universal solution to the Aspheltenes Deposition problems, why the prestigeous API has not done a Research Plan so far? I see the finding of a Universal Solution as lacking Management much more Technical capabilities. My students here in Egypt are used hearing me saying now and then a phrase: The Americans are the Pharoes of Petroleum Engineering as the Russians are the Masters of Petroleum Geochemistry. I am quite sure that America has more than needed of Technical capabilities to accomplish a Universal Solution for the Asphaltenes Deposition problems, just let someone/someauthority like the API take the role of Managing the needed Research. What do you think?
