Mohammad Torkaman - Department of Gas and Petroleum Engineering, Petroleum University of Technology, Kout Abdollah, Ahwaz, Iran
Masoud Bahrami - Department of Gas and Petroleum Engineering, Petroleum University of Technology, Kout Abdollah, Ahwaz, Iran
Mohammadreza Dehghani - Department of Chemical Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology, Narmak, Tehran, Iran

In the present paper, the effects of temperature on agglomeration kinetics of asphaltene in the heptanetoluenesolvent mixture have been studied for various values of temperatures. Particle size distributions over0.3 nm to 10 μm were measured using a Malvern ZEN3600 zetasizer nano particle analyser that uses adynamic light scattering method with backscatter detection. The results showed that the average asphalteneparticle size decreases with an increment of temperature and this is in agreement with refining literature.Furthermore, the increase of temperature results in an increase of the initial rate of asphaltene flocculation.

Asphaltenes, Aggregation, Precipitation, Dynamic light scattering