Automated method and apparatus to characterize solubility of asphaltenes of a hydrocarbon fluid sample utilizing microfluidics

Abstract

A method and apparatus for analyzing solubility of asphaltenes of a hydrocarbon fluid sample involves a sequence of operations including: i) performing microfluidic mixing operations that form a mixture that includes the hydrocarbon fluid sample, a solvent that dissolves asphaltenes and a precipitant that precipitates asphaltenes; ii) using microfluidic processes that result in precipitation of asphaltenes from the mixture resulting from i); iii) performing microfluidic filtering operations that remove precipitated asphaltenes resulting from ii) and passes permeate; and iv) performing optical spectroscopy on the permeate resulting from iii). The operations of i)-iv) can be repeated over iterations that vary the amount of solvent relative to the precipitant in the mixture. These iterations can cause varying fractional precipitation of asphaltenes in each given iteration.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.