The Effect of Resins on the Aggregation Behavior of Asphaltenes

Asphaltenes are macromolecules known to be responsible for forming deposits in pipelines and other petroleum industry equipment causing an annual expenditure of billions of dollars to clean up. Due to environmental disadvantages and tremendous cost of current cleaning methods, investigating alternative asphaltene precipitation alleviation strategies is necessary. Asphaltenes contain particular molecular features such as aromatic plains which facilitate their self-assembly in crude oil. However, the role of other components of crude oil such as resins is not transparent in the aggregation process due to the lack of a molecular-level insight. We conducted a molecular dynamics (MD) study to probe the role of resins in aggregation behavior of model asphaltenes at a molecular level. We classified asphaltenes to three categories of non-aggregating, mildly-aggregating, and readily-aggregating based on their aggregation propensity. We found either no or negative correlation between the presence of resin and the aggregation propensity of the asphaltenes. These findings will pave the road to modify oil production methods to minimize asphaltene deposition.