Roadmap to Asphaltene Characteristics, Properties, and Presence in Crude Oils Based on an Updated Database From Laboratory Studies

Asphaltene is one of the components of crude oil that can cause many problems during oil production. Understanding the asphaltene chemical structure and the conditions at which asphaltene instability was reported is extremely important in avoiding asphaltene related problems. Several experimental researches have been conducted to evaluate asphaltene concentration, particle and aggregate size, elemental content, precipitation, flocculation, deposition, pore plugging, adsorption, and wettability alteration. This research constructs a roadmap on asphaltene instability conditions using data from more than 200 laboratory studies reported on asphaltene instability problems. This research aims to provide a comprehensive and detailed data analysis on asphaltene properties, and the factors affecting asphaltene equilibrium to determine the working conditions at which asphaltene has been studied, and the main properties of asphaltene in crude oil. The data collected included 219 laboratory studies including more than 4000 experiments from countries across the globe. The data analysis involved gathering and cleaning of the data, homogenizing the units, and then analyzing the data using two statistical analysis tools including histograms and boxplots. The figures generated using these two statistical analysis tools include asphaltene properties, heteroatoms concentration, crude oil properties, and thermodynamic conditions. To the authors' knowledge, no comprehensive data analysis has been performed on asphaltene in crude oil, which makes this research significant in terms of determining the lab and field properties that mostly affect asphaltene in crude oil and the working condition affecting asphaltene equilibrium.