Asphaltenes in oil reservior recovery

Asphaltene is one of the important compositions in oil reservoirs, while it is also a major factor that causes difficulties in oil recovery and oil post-processings. Up to date, study on asphaltenes in oil recovery is still a bottleneck problem. In this paper, the advances of studies on asphaltenes are reviewed, and some directions for further studying are suggested. What is reviewed in the paper includes the precipitation studies of asphaltenes, the degradation studies of asphaltenes and the applications of asphaltene’s studying in oil recovery; furthermore, it is regarded as a promising direction to study the possible applications of asphaltene’s selectively decomposing by chemical reagents in oil recovery.