Modeling of Asphaltene Deposition on Coated Metal Surfaces

Asphaltene deposition is one of the most common problems in the petroleum industry that could be very costly and cause many operational problems. In order to select the optimal operating conditions, deposition kinetics models can be very effective in treatment of asphaltene deposition at the field scale. In this study, asphaltene was first extracted from crude oil by standard methods and then its deposition kinetics on metal surfaces coated by Teflon and silica films was evaluated in both static and dynamic flow states. Investigations showed that the flow state is effective on the asphaltene deposition kinetics so that in the static state the nth-order kinetics model and in the dynamic state the double exponential model are in the best agreement with the experimental data. According to the results, at static state and concentration of 2000 ppm, the RF and SF values for Teflon coating are 78.8023 and 21.1976, respectively, indicating faster fast deposition process for this coating. Whereas for silica film, the RF value is lower than SF, indicating a faster slow deposition process for this coating.