Abstract
Abstract
Asphaltene stability, aggregation, and transport are coupled with hydraulic and heat transfer equations to predict the effects of asphaltene deposition in wellbores and pipelines. The model uses lab measurements to characterize the asphaltene in solution and develop a precipitation curve in a pre-processing step. Smoluchowski coagulation theory predicts the rate of aggregation of smaller particles into larger particles in a geometric distribution. Finally, the resulting concentration of asphaltene particles diffuses to the wall as determined by mass convection theory. An innovative approach (Saidoun 2000), where only the primary particles, and not the aggregates, contribute to the deposit is also formulated. This second model has been successfully used to match 9 years of production data and screen a greenfield system for asphaltene risks. The simulator is deployed as a standalone desktop application built on React.JS and electron communicating to a Wolfram Engine kernel over gRPC.