ISIS Neutron and Muon Source Data Journal

Structural insights into crude oil asphaltenes II: Correlating molecular descriptors to multi-scale structure

Abstract: Asphaltenes are a complex and problematic fraction of crude oil that can precipitate, block pipeline and foul refineryequipment. Asphaltenes have a high proportion of aromatic carbon and heteroatoms (N, S, O) and are generally thought to consist of one (or more) aromatic cores with alkyl side chains. For solid asphaltenes the structural model used is of small clusters of stacked asphaltene molecules approximately 1-2nm in size. We have found that we can alter the level of stacking and phase separation using different precipitants. The proposed experiment will measure wide Q-range neutron total scattering of solid and dispersed asphaltenes from different source crudes and further fractionated according to their propensity to precipitate. Allowing us to see if the trends observed to date a true for asphaltenes from all sources.

Principal Investigator: Dr Michael Hoepfner
Local Contact: Dr Tom Headen
Experimenter: Professor Erich Muller
Experimenter: Dr Guadalupe Jimenez Serratos
Experimenter: Mr K M Rizwanur Rahman

DOI: 10.5286/ISIS.E.RB1820619

ISIS Experiment Number: RB1820619

Publisher: STFC ISIS Neutron and Muon Source

Data format: RAW/Nexus
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Data Citation

The recommended format for citing this dataset in a research publication is as:
[author], [date], [title], [publisher], [doi]

For Example:
Dr Michael Hoepfner et al; (2019): Structural insights into crude oil asphaltenes II: Correlating molecular descriptors to multi-scale structure, STFC ISIS Neutron and Muon Source, https://doi.org/10.5286/ISIS.E.RB1820619

Data is released under the CC-BY-4.0 license.