Dissipative particle dynamics simulation on the rheological properties of heavy crude oil

The rheological properties of heavy crude oil have a significant impact on the production, refining and transportation. In this paper, dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) simulations were performed to study the effects of the addition of light crude oil and emulsification on the rheological properties of heavy crude oil. The simulation results reflected that the addition of light crude oil reduced the viscosity effectively. The shear thinning behaviour of crude oil mixtures were becoming less distinct as the increase of the mass fraction of light crude oil. According to the statistics, the shear had an influence on the aggregation and spatial orientation of asphaltene molecules. In addition, the relationship between the viscosity and the oil mass fraction was investigated in the simulations of emulsion systems. The viscosity increased with the oil mass fraction slowly in oil-in-water emulsions. When the oil mass fraction was higher than 50%, the increase became much faster since systems had been converted into water-in-oil emulsions. The equilibrated morphologies of emulsion systems were shown to illustrate the phase inversion. The surfactant-like feature of asphaltenes was also studied in the simulations.