The Importance of Asphaltene Content in Petroleum—The Revision of Some Persistent Stereotypes

Abstract

It is common knowledge in petroleum science and technology that the bulk properties of a crude oil are monotonic functions of its asphaltene content. However, unbiased analysis of the world's crude oil databases reveals common peaking of oil density as well as of a frequency of oil appearance at specific asphaltene contents, close to structural phase boundaries observed in asphaltene and oil solutions. Another result of database analysis is a new analytical expression for the general trend of density-asphaltene relationship in the world's recovered (dead) crude oils.

Keywords:

• asphaltenes
• correlations
• crude oils
• density-asphaltene
• phase boundaries