A mesoscopic numerical study of shear flow effects on asphaltene self-assembly behavior in organic solvents

Abstract

A significant amount of research work has been conducted to shed light on the asphaltene aggregation behavior under no-flow conditions. However, their aggregation under shear flow conditions is poorly understood mainly due to the lack of research studies performed on this subject. In this work, we employ the Brownian dynamics simulation to examine the shear flow effects on the self-assembly behavior of asphaltenes. Three volume fractions ϕ of asphaltene nanoaggregates, ranging from 1 to 7%, are used to investigate the asphaltene aggregation behavior in heptane and heptol (i.e., a solvent containing both heptane and toluene) solvents under shear rates of = 0.0–2.5 × 10⁸ s⁻¹. The shear is applied parallel to the x-axis and the shear-gradient is along the y-axis. Under shear flow conditions, the formation of the percolating networks of aggregates is triggered at ϕ = 3% which is lower than that under the no-flow conditions, i.e., ϕ = 7%. In both solvent systems, the formed networks mainly percolate along the x- or z-axis to experience less shear-gradient. At all volume fractions, an increase in the shear rate from = 0.0 to = 2.5 × 10⁸ s⁻¹ resulted in two to three orders of magnitude improvement in the self-diffusion coefficients of colloids.