Author(s)

Peng Wang ¹

Affiliation(s)

¹ SINOPEC Petroleum Exploration & Production Research Institute, Beijing, 102206, China

Corresponding Author

Peng Wang

ABSTRACT

Asphaltene deposition remains a critical flow assurance challenge during CO₂ enhanced oil recovery (EOR), often causing abrupt injectivity decline and near-wellbore formation damage. While field experience indicates that pressure, temperature, and injection gas concentration control precipitation severity, a quantitative link between these operational parameters and crude oil molecular architecture is lacking. This study employs molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to bridge this gap, using a validated SARA-based crude oil model to systematically decouple the effects of operational variables (pressure, temperature, CO₂ concentration) from intrinsic molecular architecture (continental vs. archipelago asphaltenes). Results indicate that pressure depletion from 40 MPa to 10 MPa increases the asphaltene aggregate size by 24%, equivalent to a 58% increase in thermodynamic incompatibility (Δδ) with the oil phase. Furthermore, continental-type asphaltenes exhibit a 21.6% stronger self-association energy than archipelago types, suggesting that reservoirs rich in large aromatic cores possess a significantly narrower operational window for CO₂ injection before precipitation occurs. Crucially, this work translates molecular-scale non-covalent interactions into practical screening criteria: it identifies a critical Δδ threshold for deposition onset and highlights that controlling the CO₂ concentration below 20 mol% can suppress aggregate growth by approximately 33% compared to high-concentration floods. This molecular-to-engineering framework provides reservoir engineers with a mechanistic basis to pre-screen crude oil samples, tailor injection pressures to avoid the bubble-point region, and adjust CO₂ slug sizes to mitigate near-wellbore formation damage.

KEYWORDS

CO₂ flooding; asphaltene association; molecular dynamics simulation; non-covalent in-teractions; π-π stacking

CITE THIS PAPER

Peng Wang. Managing Asphaltene Flow Assurance in CO₂ Flooding: Molecular Guidance for Evaluating Operational Limits and Oil Chemistry. Environment, Resource and Ecology Journal (2026). Vol. 10, No.1, 48-61. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23977/erej.2026.100107.

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