Solids contents, properties and molecular structures of asphaltenes from different oilsands

As the Canadian supply of light crudes has diminished in recent years, refineries have necessarily been required to deal with difficult to process oilsands bitumens and heavy oils. Bitumen in particular exhibits unique behavior during upgrading; nearly 50% (w/w) of the feedstock is an intractable residuum. The fast catalyst deactivation and high coke forming propensity displayed by this feedstock have been attributed to the asphaltene and associated solids contents of extracted bitumen. The variability of these intractable components in bitumens from mined and in-situ Athabasca oilsands were examined and compared with bitumens from Nigerian and Utah oilsands. Except for the in-situ bitumen, all of the samples were found to contain significant amounts of fine solids. Unexpectedly, the in-situ bitumen also contained the least amount of asphaltene and the highest amount of the intractable heteroatoms nickel and vanadium. Solids-free asphaltene samples were characterized by several complementary analytical techniques to determine the relative abundance of different carbon types and to calculate their average three-dimensional molecular conformations. Even though the parent bitumens came from geographically diverse sources the corresponding asphaltene fractions had similar structures. Each sample comprised basic units, or ‘cores’, of condensed aromatic rings connected by bridges. The main differences relate to the number and complexity of the basic units.