Method of photon correlation spectroscopy in the study of oil dispersed systems

Oil is a dispersed system, and by influencing the nature of the interaction between paraffins, resins and asphaltenes, it becomes possible to control the processes of structure formation in the oil system. Asphaltenes have a great influence on the physicochemical and operational properties of oils, and much attention has been paid to their study, especially in recent years in connection with the involvement of new research methods. One of such methods is the method of photon correlation spectroscopy (PCS). The method allows studying the behavior of an oil dispersed system under the influence of solvents of different nature and temperature. The study of the processes of aggregation of oil asphaltenes and determination of the dimensional parameters of micro- and nanostructures of deposited particles is important for increasing the efficiency of residual oil recovery technologies. Obtaining such data provides great opportunities for predicting the accumulation of tar-asphaltene deposits. This expands the possibilities for the preliminary implementation of measures to remove them and reduce the costs associated with the elimination of accidents. The practical value of knowledge about asphaltenes is boundless, since it is these components that largely determine the behavior of oil systems. In this work, the propensity of an oil sample to asphaltene precipitation was studied by the method of photon correlation spectroscopy, depending on the nature of the solvent and temperature. Dilute oil solutions were studied on the PhotoCor instrument; four solvents of the grade (chemically pure) for spectroscopy were used as solvents: carbon tetrachloride, benzene, chloroform, n-hexane. The advantage of the PCS method is that it works in opaque systems and allows one to determine the size of colloidal particles without preliminary calibration of the spectrometer. The results of the work indicate that the FCS method allows you to quickly obtain data on the dynamics of changes in parameters in the oil system during the processes of dissolution and heating. Using the PCS method, it was shown that in all the studied solvents, the system exhibits a polydispersity of the composition in terms of mass numbers. Contribution of the authors: the authors contributed equally to this article. The authors declare no conflicts of interests.

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