Dissolution and stabilization of thermally converted bitumen

摘要

A heavy hydrocarbon is rendered pipelineable by hydroconverting the heavy hydrocarbon under conditions sufficient to obtain a product oil of lowered viscosity and an API gravity suitable for pipelining and thereafter adding a diluent modified hydrocarbon to the product oil in an amount sufficient to stabilize the product oil against asphaltene phase separation and when phase separated asphaltene is present to dissolve the phase separated asphaltenes.