Automated method and apparatus for measuring saturate, aromatic, resin, and asphaltene fractions using microfluidics and spectroscopy

Abstract

A method of determining saturate, aromatic, resin, and asphaltene (SARA) fractions of a hydrocarbon fluid sample, including: i) microfluidic mixing that forms a mixture including the hydrocarbon fluid sample and a solvent fluid that dissolves asphaltenes; ii) performing optical spectroscopy on the hydrocarbon fluid sample-solvent fluid mixture resulting from i); iii) microfluidic mixing that forms a mixture including the hydrocarbon fluid sample and a titrant fluid that precipitates asphaltenes; iv) microfluidically precipitating asphaltenes from the hydrocarbon fluid sample titrant fluid mixture resulting from iii); v) performing a microfluidic filtering operation that removes precipitated asphaltenes from the mixture resulting from iv) while outputting permeate; vi) performing optical spectroscopy on the permeate resulting from v); vii) determining an asphaltene fraction percentage of the hydrocarbon fluid sample based on the optical spectroscopy performed in ii) and vi); viii) sequentially separating saturate-, aromatic-, and resin-containing portions from the permeate from v); ix) for each separating of viii), measuring an optical property of the respective saturate-, aromatic-, and resin-containing portions over time; and x) determining fraction percentages of saturates, aromatics, and resins in the hydrocarbon fluid sample based on the measured optical properties of ix) and respective mass-to-optical correlation data.