EFFECTS OF ASPHALTENE PRECIPITATION AND REPRECIPTION ON THE METAL-CONTAINING COMPOUNDS IN HEAVY RESIDUA

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Abstract
Boscan vacuum residuum (VR) has been separated into isooctane insoluble asphaltenes and isooctane soluble maltenes. The asphaltenes were dissolved in a minimum of toluene and were further separated by two additional reprecipitations using isooctane as the precipitating solvent. We examined the fractions, including the recovered isooctane soluble material, by size exclusion chromatography (SEC) with inductively coupled plasma (ICP) emission spectroscopy to determine the effects, if any, the reprecipitations have on the size distribution of the metal-containing compounds. The asphaltene fractions show little change in size upon reprecipitation, but removal of a small amount of the metal components does occur. The first reprecipitation produces isooctane soluble material which is very similar in size to the original maltene fraction. However, the second reprecipitation removes small amounts of material in the size range of the asphaltenes. When the amounts were weight balanced, the resulting separation did little to effect the overall maltene and asphaltene size profiles.