Asphaltene Deposition ― Fundamentals, Prediction, Prevention, and Remediation

As global consumption of fossil fuels such as oil increases, previously abundant sources have become depleted or plagued with obstructions. Asphaltene deposition is one of such obstructions which can significantly decrease the rate of oil production. This book offers concise yet thorough coverage of the complex problem of asphaltene precipitation and deposition in oil production. It covers fundamentals of chemistry, stabilization theories and mechanistic approaches of asphaltene behavior at high temperature and pressure. Asphaltene Deposition: Fundamentals, Prediction, Prevention, and Remediation explains techniques for experimental determination of asphaltene precipitation and deposition and different modeling tools available to forecast the occurrence and magnitude of asphaltene deposition in a given oil field. It discusses strategies for mitigation of asphaltene deposition using chemical inhibition and corresponding challenges, best practices for asphaltene remediation, current research, and case studies.

Francisco M. Vargas is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the Principal Investigator of the Petroleum Thermodynamics and Flow Assurance Laboratory at Rice University. From 2010 to 2013 he was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Petroleum Institute and he was also the Manager of the Flow Assurance R&D Program of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) in the United Arab Emirates. He has also been a member of the Flow Assurance Team of Chevron Energy Technology Company and has worked for DeepStar, a joint industry project for deep water production in the Gulf of Mexico. Dr. Vargas has been the co-chair of the Upstream Engineering and Flow Assurance Forum of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) and he has served in multiple occasions and in different capacities in technical committees of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) in various conferences and technical workshops. Dr. Vargas has developed advanced experimental and modeling methods to better understand the phase behavior of reservoir fluids, obtain thermo-physical properties of hydrocarbon systems and predict the occurrence and the magnitude of asphaltene deposition problems in oil production.

Mohammad Tavakkoli is a postdoctoral research associate at Rice University. His research experience includes using SAFT equation state for predicting asphaltene phase behavior at reservoir conditions, investigation of rheological behavior of oil-asphaltene systems, prediction of asphaltene deposition in wellbore, understanding of asphaltene-metal surface interactions using QCM-D experiments and simulation of 3D – 2 phase flow through porous media. He received his PhD in Petroleum Engineering from Sharif University of Technology.