Assistant Professor Yuecheng "Peter" Zhou of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at The Grainger College of Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has won funding from the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund (ACS PRF).
Why it matters: Asphaltenes — molecules found in crude oil — tend to clump together when exposed to light alkanes, a problem that can cause costly downtime and added expenses during oil production. Zhou's research aims to better understand a low-energy technique called electrodeposition that could help separate asphaltenes at industrial scale.
By the numbers:
- $110,000 in funding for the proposal, "Understanding Asphaltene Electrodeposition Mechanism Using Label-Free Electrochemical Imaging."
How it works: Electrodeposition uses electric fields to accumulate asphaltenes on conductive surfaces that enables tunable film growth. But how solvents, flow and electric field influence the early deposition kinetics and shape the film properties are still not well understood.
- Zhou's team will build a surface plasmon resonance imaging platform paired with electrochemical and microfluidic flow control to track asphaltene electrodeposition in its earliest stages.
- They'll also measure the charge transport properties of the resulting films.
- The goal: phase maps linking solvent quality, flow conditions and electrodeposition waveforms to deposition behavior.
"The dynamics of asphaltene deposition under the influence of electric field is not well understood, and is the question we will answer here. This knowledge will inform the potential future use of electrodeposition as a method for industrial-scale asphaltene separation." - Assistant Professor Yuecheng "Peter" Zhou
What's next: Zhou's team hopes the work establishes the fundamental mechanistic fingerprints of asphaltene electrodeposition, helping to scale up the method for removing asphaltenes — a problem with significant stakes for the petroleum industry.
Illinois Grainger Engineering Affiliations
Yuecheng "Peter" Zhou is an Illinois Grainger Engineering assistant professor of Materials Science and Engineering and is affiliated with the Department of Bioengineering, the Materials Research Laboratory and the Beckman Institute.