Comparative Study of Techniques Used to Determine Asphaltene Stability

Abstract

The condition of asphaltene deposition is poorly known, creating it one of the heaviest challenging flow assurance issues in oil production. An important stage of this problem is asphaltene stability, which indicates whether the asphaltene can be precipitated from a petroleum sample. This study investigated the efficiency of many forecasting models used to evaluate asphaltene stability in the petroleum depending only on SARA (Saturate, Aromatics, Resins and Asphaltene) fractions. To identify the precision of eight models of asphaltene stability, 298 crude oil samples from various worldwide sources were examined. By exhibiting obvious distinctions in sample sorting between the models, the findings showed the impact of methodological assumptions and fundamental factors. The factors of confusion matrix were utilized to statistically evaluate each prediction model’s performance. The Colloidal Stability Index (CSI) was selected as the most reliable technique as it is showed the highest overall accuracy among all the examined models. Additionally, CSI was conducted to examine the stability condition of asphaltene in Iraqi petroleum samples, and the predicted results were matched the experimental findings because they were all prone to asphaltene precipitation (unstable samples).