Lubricant-Impregnated Surfaces for Mitigating Asphaltene Deposition
Name
GHM305.pdf
Description
Accepted version
Size
2.66 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
f3ec7a9a81b34f18273aa5243ea0c02e
Author(s)
Girard, Henri-Louis
Bourrianne, Philippe
Yeganeh, Mohsen
Cohen, Robert E
McKinley, Gareth H
Varanasi, Kripa K
Date Issued
2020
Journal
ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces
Publisher
American Chemical Society (ACS)
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
© 2020 American Chemical Society. Asphaltenes are heavy aromatic components of crude oil. Their complex chemical makeup - an aromatic core surrounded by aliphatic side chains - enables them to adhere to most surfaces. Their buildup in pipes can result in clogging and lead to interruption of production operations and expensive mechanical cleaning. We demonstrate the use of liquid-impregnated surfaces (LIS) to prevent asphaltene deposition and buildup on substrates. Indeed, these surfaces expose a liquid interface to the working fluid, which combines the benefits of a dynamic defect-free surface and tunable interfacial properties. In contrast to bulk additives that are typically mixed into the oil phase, the impregnating liquid also provides the great benefit of protecting the underlying solid surface with a stable and minimal layer of lubricant, thereby reducing costs and eliminating the need for subsequent downstream removal. We first select and confirm the thermodynamic stability of a suitable lubricant and its lack of interaction with asphaltenes. By using a carefully selected system composed of a textured and functionalized solid substrate in conjunction with a fluorinated lubricant, we show that asphaltene adsorption is prevented over long time scales. We further demonstrate the possibility of building such a system with representative industrial materials such as aluminum and expose the resulting substrate to an external shear flow to simulate pipe flow conditions.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Chemical Engineering
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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1021/ACSAMI.0C03967
