Phase behavior of binary mixture of asphaltene + solvent and ternary mixture of asphaltene + solvent + precipitant

Asphaltene precipitation is a perennial problem in producing and refining crude oils. To study asphaltene precipitation, it is useful to model the solubility of asphaltenes in petroleum fluids as a function of temperature and liquid-phase composition. In this work a polymer solution model is used for asphaltene precipitation in two cases. In the first case a binary mixture is considered which consists of asphaltene as a polymer component and crude oil as the solvent. In the second case ap ternary mixture is considered which consists of asphaltene as a polymer component and crude oil as the solvent and a precipitant as the third component. The phase diagrams and phase stability limits obtained for a sample of crude oil with four different precipitants are presented.