Structural insights into crude oil asphaltenes: A multi-parametric SANS/WANS study

DOI

Asphaltenes are a complex and problematic fraction of crude oil that can precipitate, alter wettability and stabilise unwanted oil-in-water emulsions. Asphaltene molecules are generally thought to consist of one (or more) aromatic cores with alkyl side chains. When the asphaltenes precipitate from crude oil they are thought to do so by stacking of the aromatic cores. This can be seen in small angle scattering due to aggregation of carbon rich aromatic cores and in the wide angle scattering by a broad peak similar to that seen in graphite. However key questions remain, such as the proportion of asphaltenes that form these stacked aromatic cores. The prevailing model for asphaltene structure is based on the majority of asphaltene molecules aggregating through stacking, initial results have shown this may not be the case, we will use NIMROD to measure SANS/WANS to study this further.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.5286/ISIS.E.86391511
Metadata Access https://icatisis.esc.rl.ac.uk/oaipmh/request?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_datacite&identifier=oai:icatisis.esc.rl.ac.uk:inv/86391511
Provenance
Creator Dr Michael Hoepfner; Dr Tom Headen
Publisher ISIS Neutron and Muon Source
Publication Year 2020
Rights CC-BY Attribution 4.0 International; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
OpenAccess true
Contact isisdata(at)stfc.ac.uk
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Discipline Chemistry; Construction Engineering and Architecture; Engineering; Engineering Sciences; Natural Sciences
Temporal Coverage Begin 2017-05-12T08:00:00Z
Temporal Coverage End 2017-05-18T05:17:13Z