An Investigation into the Precipitation of Asphaltene from Maltenes Using Binary Mixtures of N-Paraffin

This work investigates the precipitation of asphaltene from maltenes using single and binary mixtures of n-alkanes. The maltenes was obtained by the precipitation from crude oil using n-alkanes (nC 5 -nC 7 ). These were deasphalted with a lower carbon number solvent (nC 5 ). The result shows the co-precipitation of the asphaltene are saturates, aromatics and resins. The result obtained generally shows that the asphaltene precipitation from maltenes increased as the n-alkane carbon number of the original precipitating solvent increased.