Effect of Asphaltene Structure on Association and Aggregation Using Molecular Dynamics

The aggregation of asphaltenes has been established for decades by numerous experimental techniques; however, very few studies have been performed on the association free energy and asphaltene aggregation in solvents. The lack of reliable and coherent data on the free energy of association and aggregation size of asphaltene has imposed severe limitations on the thermodynamic modeling of asphaltene phase behavior. Current thermodynamic models either consider asphaltenes as non-associating components or use fitting parameters to characterize the association. In this work, the relations between Gibbs free energy of asphaltene association and asphaltene molecular structure are studied using molecular dynamics (MD). The free energy of association is computed from the potential of mean force profile along the separation distance between the centers of mass of two asphaltene molecules using the umbrella sampling technique in the GROMACS simulation package. The average aggregation number for asphaltene nanoaggregates and dusters is also calculated through MD simulations of 36 asphaltene molecules in toluene and heptane in order to estimate the effects of association free energy and steric repulsion on the aggregation behavior of asphaltenes. Our simulation results confirm that the interactions between aromatic cores of asphaltene molecules are the major driving force for association as the energy of association increases substantially with the number of aromatic rings. Moreover, heteroatoms attached to the aromatic cores have much more influence on the association free energy than to ones attached to the aliphatic chains. The length and number of aliphatic chains do not seem to have a noticeable effect on asphaltene dimerization; however, they have a profound effect on asphaltene aggregation size since steric repulsion can prevent asphaltenes from forming T-shape configurations and therefore decrease the aggregation size of asphaltenes significantly. Our MD simulation results show for the first time asphaltene precipitation in heptane as an explicit solvent, and predict three distinct stages of aggregation (nanoaggregation, dustering, and flocculation) as proposed by the modified Yen model. Finally, the association free energy for asphaltenes in heptane is higher than that in toluene, which is consistent with asphaltene aggregate sizes obtained from MD simulations.