Effect of High Molecular Weight Asphaltenes on the Phase Stability of Methane Hydrates

Asphaltenes are heavy and polar fractions present in crude oil. Literature survey reveals that studies underlying the effect of individual components of crude oil on hydrate formation are rare. In this work, asphaltene fractions were extracted from a vacuum residue of the crude oil according to method based on IP143/90 (AlHumaidan et al., 2017) and characterized by FTIR, element analysis, SEM and MALDI-TOF MS. Thereafter, the effect of asphaltenes was studied on the phase stability of pure methane hydrate system at 1000 ppm and 10000 ppm concentration. It has been observed that the asphaltene plays an important role in elucidating the phase stability of methane hydrate systems.