Prevention of asphaltene aggregation is a key part of the flow assurance puzzle. Nanoparticles are a type of inhibitor that has shown great potential to delay and prevent asphaltene aggregation and deposition. This paper is pioneer in exploring nanoparticle inhibitory impact on asphaltene aggregation in a mixture solvent using molecular dynamics simulation. Magnetite nanoparticles (Fe3O4) has showed inhibitory effect on asphaltene aggregation under controlled conditions but the mechanisms behind the effect still needs more exploration. Our results confirm the positive impact of nanoparticles in decreasing asphaltene aggregation. It is attributed to the nanoparticles’ ability to impede the growth of asphaltene aggregates due to their attractive interaction forces with asphaltene, resulting in the adsorption of asphaltene onto the nanoparticle surfaces. We also studied the effect of NaCl salt on Fe3O4 nanoparticles inhibitory effect. NaCl serves as a source of Na+ ions in aqueous solutions and promote asphaltene aggregation in the absence of nanoparticles, while it reduces the asphaltene aggregation in the presence of nanoparticles. Moreover, as the number of nanoparticles increases, aggregation stabilizes, underscoring their capacity to both diminish and regulate aggregation levels. Therefore, the results verify the nanoparticles function as preventor of asphaltene aggregation a with long lasting effect. We also confirms that the aggregation of asphaltene in mixture solvent differs from pure heptane solvent which answer the concern regarding the previous studies simplification. The result of our simulation strongly recommend considering mixture solvent instead of heptane in inhibitor selection and contribute to the design and selection of nanoparticles as inhibitor of asphaltene aggregation.
