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