Naphthenic Acid Extraction and Characterization From Crude Oils and Naphthenate Field Deposits Revisited. (ABSTRACT)

摘要

Production of crude oil with high total acid number (TAN) poses a serious problem in the oil industry which often leads to the formation of either sodium emulsion or calcium naphthenate deposits. Calcium naphthenate formation during the production operations is increasing flow assurance problem for the oil industry, hence extraction and characterization of the different types of acids from the crude oils and the naphthenate field deposits is very important. There has been much discussion in the literature about the discovery and quantification of higher molecular weight acids in naphthenate field deposits, referred to as "ARN" acids. In this work, field naphthenate deposits from two different Norwegian fields (X and HD) were used for the naphthenic acid extraction using 3 different methods (which will be described). Characterization of the extracted naphthenic acids was carried out using electrospray mass spectrometry (ESMS) and atmospheric pressure chemical ionisation mass spectrometry (APCI-MS).