Characterisation of Asphaltenes: Towards a molecular level understanding of heavy oils

Asphaltenes are a fraction of large, complex hydrocarbon molecules found in heavy oils responsible for many difficulties experienced during production, transportation, storage and refining. Understanding the properties of asphaltenes is an interesting and challenging research problem that has attracted increasing attention from both academia and industry. This thesis work took a structure-to-function approach to the challenge and systematically characterised asphaltenes extracted from three different sources. Their molecular weight and size, PAH architecture, aliphatic slide chain and aggregation behaviour were investigated extensively using a suite of complimentary techniques. This thesis work has advances the molecular level understanding of asphaltene structure.