Inorganic solids are often present in real heavy oil systems, but are typically absent in asphaltene laboratory studies. For the first time, we investigate the influence of inorganic solids on the kinetic precipitation of asphaltenes. In contrast to potentially slow kinetics in homogeneous liquid petroleum mixtures, rapid kinetic precipitation of asphaltenes was observed when inorganic solids were present in the system. A combined homogeneous aggregation and diffusion-limited heterogeneous nucleation model was developed to quantify the rate of asphaltene precipitation under the explored experimental conditions. The rate of heterogeneous nucleation was generally observed to be faster than the rate of homogeneous aggregation; however, this trend was reversed as the solvent strength decreased and greater quantities of asphaltenes precipitated. The inorganic solids were characterized, and kaolinite clay was observed in the studied samples. This investigation leads to a clearer understanding of the complex asphaltene aggregation process that occurs in real and heterogeneous systems. The competing pathways of asphaltene precipitation provide novel insight into asphaltene precipitation and deposition, in addition to new experimental strategies to measure asphaltene solubility.

中文翻译：

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分散固体快速异质沥青沉淀

无机固体通常存在于实际的重油系统中，但在沥青质实验室研究中通常不存在。首次，我们研究了无机固体对沥青质动力学沉淀的影响。与均相液态石油混合物中潜在的缓慢动力学相反，当系统中存在无机固体时，可以观察到沥青质的快速动力学沉淀。建立了均相聚集和扩散受限非均质成核模型，以量化在探索的实验条件下沥青质沉淀的速率。通常观察到异质成核的速率快于均相聚集的速率。但是，随着溶剂强度的降低和大量沥青质的沉淀，这种趋势得到了扭转。表征了无机固体，并在研究的样品中观察到高岭石粘土。这项研究可以使人们更清楚地了解在实际系统和异构系统中发生的复杂沥青质聚集过程。除了测量沥青质溶解度的新实验策略外，沥青质沉淀的竞争途径还提供了有关沥青质沉淀和沉积的新颖见解。