Patent ID: 7618822

Claim:
A crude oil blend comprising two or more crude oils blended by a method comprising the steps of: (a) determining the critical solvent power for each crude oil by: (i) mixing each crude oil with predetermined amounts of a paraffinic hydrocarbon having a solvent power of zero; (ii) centrifuging each resulting mixture; (iii) recovering and weighing any resulting precipitated asphaltenes from step (ii); and (iv) correlating the weight of the precipitated asphaltenes in step (iii) to the solvent power at which asphaltenes begin to precipitate out of the crude oil; (b) determining the solvent power for each crude oil by: (i) determining the distillation curve and density of each crude oil; (ii) numerically integrating the distillation curve of each crude oil producing the volume average boiling point for each crude oil; (iii) calculating the characterization K factor for each crude oil using the volume average boiling point in step (ii); and (iv) determining the solvent power of each crude oil using the characterization K factor in step (iii); and (c) blending each crude oil into each other producing a crude oil blend wherein the solvent power of the crude oil blend is greater than the critical solvent power of the crude oil having the highest critical solvent power in the blend; wherein a Monte Carlo simulation is used to select a plurality of different blend ratios of the two or more crude oils to calculate the solvent power in step (b) of each crude oil blend.