Jiang Wang’s paper on mesoscale modeling of asphaltene aggregation published in J. Phys. Chem. B

Jiang’s paper “Mesoscale simulation of asphaltene aggregation” has been published in J. Phys. Chem. B (http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpcb.6b05925). Asphaltenes constitute a heavy aromatic crude oil fraction with a propensity to aggregate and precipitate out of solution during petroleum processing. This paper describes the construction of a coarse-grained model for asphaltene parameterized directly against all-atom calculations, and the use of this model to probe the self-assembly of hundreds of asphlatenes over microsecond time scales. These calculations provide molecular level support for the proposed Yen-Mullins hierarchy for assembly into nanoaggregates, clusters, and finally a porous percolating network with fractal dimension of ~2. Congratulations to Jiang!