1887

Abstract

Asphaltene precipitation is known as one of the side effects of gas injection in the depleted oil reservoirs. In this study surface topography alteration during high pressure precipitation process on different substrates (mica and glass) was studied. Fractal analysis of the surface images was performed which led to the calculation of fractal dimensions (D). The difference statistics method was used to calculate fractal dimensions. To obtain the images of asphaltene deposits on the surface, in micro scale size, a high pressure cell was designed. The condition for asphaltene precipitation in a solution of Asphaltene/Toluene/ Heptane was maintained by changing the pressure of the cell. Results showed that by increasing of pressure, the mica and glass surfaces tend to be altered to the oil wet conditions because of the increase in fractal dimension which is the representative of surface roughness. It was also observed that fractal dimension of asphaltene-deposited glass surface is more than the one for asphaltene-deposited mica surface at the end of experiment. Since number of nucleation- growth sites on mica surface are much more than those of glass surface thus asphaltene growth on mica surface is much more noticeable which can fill micro-asperities.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/papers/10.3997/2214-4609.20145926
2009-05-04
2024-03-28
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

http://instance.metastore.ingenta.com/content/papers/10.3997/2214-4609.20145926
Loading
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a Success
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error