Asphaltene inhibition and flow improvement of crude oil with a high content of asphaltene and wax by polymers bearing ultralong side chain

Asphaltene inhibition and flow improvement of crude oil with a high content of asphaltene and wax by polymers bearing ultralong side chain

Asphaltenes

Crude oil

Particle size

Petroleum transportation

Oil fields

Precipitation (chemical)

Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy

Dynamic light scattering

Biopolymers

Binary alloys

A high content of asphaltene and wax in crude oil leads to difficulties in the recovery and transportation of crude oil due to the precipitation of asphaltenes and the deposition of waxes. Comblike polymers were found to be capable of inhibiting the aggregation of asphaltenes and crys-tallization of waxes. In this work, comblike bipolymers of olefins/ultralong chain (C18, C22 and C28) alkyl acrylate were synthesized and characterized by FTIR and1 H NMR spectra. The results show that, for a model oil containing asphaltene, the initial precipitation point (IPP) of asphaltene was prolonged by UV, and the asphaltene particle size was reduced after adding the biopolymers, as revealed by dynamitic light scattering (DLS). The bipolymer containing the longer alkyl chain had a better asphaltene inhibition effect. However, DSC and rheological results show that the wax appearance temperature (WAT) of the typical high asphaltene and high wax content of crude oil was obviously reduced by adding bipolymers with shorter alkyl chains. The bipolymer (TDA2024 22) with a mediate alkyl chain (C22) reduced the viscosity and thixotropy of the crude oil by a much larger margin than others. Compared with the previously synthesized bipolymer with phenyl pen-dant (PDVA18), TDA202422 exhibited a better performance. Therefore, bipolymers with appro-priate alkyl side chains can act as not only the asphaltene inhibitors but also wax inhibitors for high asphaltene and wax content of crude oil, which has great potential applications in the oil fields. 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

24

14

Energies

2021

Li, Xinyuan

Lu, Shu

Niu, Meifei

Cheng, Ruzhen

Gong, Yanjun

Xu, Jun

journalArticle

19961073

10.3390/en14248243