Studying asphaltene deposition inhibitors using surface plasmon resonance

We present a direct method to evaluate the effect of chemical inhibitors on the asphaltene deposition from crude oil using a surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor. Titration experiments were performed to induce asphaltene precipitation and deposition, which resulted in shifts of the SPR peak wavelength. SPR was effective at identifying the onset of asphaltene deposition, as well as, highlighting different temporal profiles when inhibitors were used. SPR peak wavelength can be used to characterize the refractive index of the formed deposit, and thus correlated to deposit density. Our results demonstrate that SPR techniques can be used to characterize the impact of inhibitors on the asphaltene deposition rate and composition. We believe SPR sensors will find broad applicability as a monitoring approach and/or to enable library screening methodologies.