Investigation of Crude Oil Asphaltenes

Asphaltene is known as the heaviest fluid component of crude oil and has a significant impact on its resistance behavior. In recent years, determining the nature of asphaltene in oil has been the target of many researches. Some investigators believe that the structure of asphaltene is colloidalmaterial which is suspended by stabilizing factors in oil. In this article, asphaltene, separated by normal alkanes and its structure is examined. In this regard, various methods, including the IP143 method of oil standard institute, introduced as an efficient method of separating asphaltene, have been studied. In this paper, it has been tried to collect all information related to asphaltene through surveying its structure andseparation methods, to be available as a reference.