The production of heavy and extra-heavy oil is
challenging because of the rheological properties that crude
oil presents due to its high asphaltene content. The upgrading
and recovery processes of these unconventional oils are
typically water and energy intensive, which makes such
processes costly and environmentally unfriendly. Nanoparticle
catalysts could be used to enhance the upgrading and
recovery of heavy oil under both in situ and ex situ conditions.
In this study, the effect of the Ni-Pd nanocatalysts
supported on fumed silica nanoparticles on post-adsorption
catalytic thermal cracking of n-C7 asphaltenes was investigated
using a thermogravimetric analyzer coupled with
FTIR. The performance of catalytic thermal cracking of n-C7
asphaltenes in the presence of NiO and PdO supported on
fumed silica nanoparticles was better than on the fumed
silica support alone. For a fixed amount of adsorbed n-C7
asphaltenes (0.2 mg/m2), bimetallic nanoparticles showed
better catalytic behavior than monometallic nanoparticles,
confirming their synergistic effects. The corrected Ozawa–
Flynn–Wall equation (OFW) was used to estimate the
effective activation energies of the catalytic process. The
mechanism function, kinetic parameters, and transition state
thermodynamic functions for the thermal cracking process of
n-C7 asphaltenes in the presence and absence of nanoparticles
are investigated.