OU professor awarded research grant to improve crude oil transportation

Oakland University Professor Ngong Kodiah Beyeh is using his extensive knowledge of chemical compounds to keep crude oil pipelines from clogging. 

Dr. Beyeh was recently awarded a two-year, $110,000 grant from the American Chemical Society’s Petroleum Research Fund that will support his research on preventing aggregation of asphaltenes, molecular substances known to restrict oil flow.

“This is a major problem in the crude oil industry,” said Dr. Beyeh, an assistant professor in OU’s Department of Chemistry. “They currently use commercial additives to soften the oil and prevent asphaltene aggregation. My approach will be to use organic macrocycles, which are chemical compounds that have properties similar to the commercial additives, but also additional characteristics that can make them more efficient at preventing asphaltene aggregation.”

If the research succeeds, it could lead to vast improvements in the transportation of crude oil to market. Dr. Beyeh noted that his preliminary studies using macrocycles to prevent asphaltene aggregation showed promise, which he believes was key to securing the grant.

“My graduate student Kwaku Twum and I obtained some crude oil from Texas and were able to show that using macrocycles works quite well,” said Dr. Beyeh. “The grant process is highly competitive, so it helped to show that this idea is feasible.”

Dr. Beyeh’s award, called the Doctoral New Investigator Grant, supports investigator-initiated, original research in petroleum-relevant science. In this case, original research is defined as being different from that performed previously by the principal investigator as part of their graduate or postdoctoral studies.  

Dr. Beyeh’s research has focused on supramolecular chemistry, a field devoted to understanding how molecular processes work. This can encompass everything from how drugs attack bacteria to how wetsuits provide protection from water. Now he is using his knowledge to solve a longstanding problem in the petroleum industry, a field he had never worked with prior to receiving this grant. 

“I have been using chemical compounds to understand how biological systems and materials operate,” he explained. “Now the question is, how can I take that same thinking and apply it to petroleum products?”

According to Dr. Beyeh, the grant will also sponsor one doctoral student and a few undergraduate students who will assist in the research.

For more information about research and programs in OU’s Department of Chemistry, visit oakland.edu/chemistry.