(450b) Composition of Heavy Oil From Speed of Sound Data

As reserves for light and conventional oils are in decline, demand on heavy and unconventional oils is on the rise. Production and processing of such oils require knowledge of their composition for proper characterization and design of related processing equipment. Heavy oils are usually rich in asphaltene which upon precipitation may cause significant flow problems in production and processing units. In this presentation we examine several measurable properties such as speed of sound and dipole moment which may be used for characterization of heavy oils.

Speed of sound in oils can be accurately measured under different conditions of temperature and pressure. In this presentation we show some recently measured data for the speed of sound in pure hydrocarbons, crude oil and deasphalted oils. Analysis of data show that sonic velocity may be used to determine amount of asphaltene and other heavy components in oils. In addition a predictive method to determine speed of sound from bulk properties is presented for cases that data on the speed of sound is not available.