Artificial Intelligence Based Methods for Asphaltenes Adsorption by Nanocomposites: Application of Group Method of Data Handling, Least Squares Support Vector Machine, and Artificial Neural Networks

Abstract

Asphaltenes deposition is considered a serious production problem. The literature does not include enough comprehensive studies on adsorption phenomenon involved in asphaltenes deposition utilizing inhibitors. In addition, effective protocols on handling asphaltenes deposition are still lacking. In this study, three efficient artificial intelligent models including group method of data handling (GMDH), least squares support vector machine (LSSVM), and artificial neural network (ANN) are proposed for estimating asphaltenes adsorption onto NiO/SAPO-5, NiO/ZSM-5, and NiO/AlPO-5 nanocomposites based on a databank of 252 points. Variables influencing asphaltenes adsorption include pH, temperature, amount of nanocomposites over asphaltenes initial concentration (D/C ₀), and nanocomposites characteristics such as BET surface area and volume of micropores. The models are also optimized using nine optimization techniques, namely coupled simulated annealing (CSA), genetic algorithm (GA), Bayesian regularization (BR), scaled conjugate gradient (SCG), ant colony optimization (ACO), Levenberg–Marquardt (LM), imperialistic competitive algorithm (ICA), conjugate gradient with Fletcher-Reeves updates (CGF), and particle swarm optimization (PSO). According to the statistical analysis, the proposed RBF-ACO and LSSVM-CSA are the most accurate approaches that can predict asphaltenes adsorption with average absolute percent relative errors of 0.892% and 0.94%, respectively. The sensitivity analysis shows that temperature has the most impact on asphaltenes adsorption from model oil solutions.