The Modified Yen Model

Asphaltenes, the most aromatic of the heaviest components of crude oil, are critical to all aspects of petroleum use, including production, transportation, refining, upgrading, and heavy-end use in paving and coating materials. As such, efficiency in these diverse disciplines mandates proper chemical accounting of structure−function relations of crude oils and asphaltenes, the vision of petroleomics (Asphaltenes, Heavy Oils and Petroleomics; Mullins, O. C., Sheu, E. Y., Hammami, A., Marshall, A. G., Eds.; Springer: New York, 2007). Indeed, the molecular characterization of asphaltenes is required as well as the detailed understanding of the hierarchical colloidal structures of asphaltenes and petroleum. With…