Research Progress on Bitumen, Heavy-Oil and Petroleum Chemistry

Dear Colleagues,

The global demand for energy and raw materials continues to influence industrial and research priorities. Bitumen, heavy oils, and complex petroleum matrices constitute a significant portion of current and future energy resources. These materials pose specific challenges in production, upgrading, transportation, and refining, requiring advances in thermodynamics, interfacial science, reaction engineering, and flow assurance.

Progress in laboratory characterization, molecular-level analysis, and computational modeling, including equation-of-state formulations, rate-based methods, CFD, and data-driven tools, has improved the understanding of asphaltenes, resins, heavy fractions, emulsions, and multiphase flows relevant to heavy-oil systems.

At the same time, environmental requirements and the transition to lower-impact technologies reinforce the need for sustainable approaches in heavy-oil chemistry. Research in this field addresses low-carbon refining routes, environmentally compliant additives, lifecycle assessment, emissions control, produced-water management, and environmental behavior as part of the broader technical analysis of heavy-oil systems.

This Special Issue on “Research Progress on Bitumen, Heavy-Oil and Petroleum Chemistry” will include contributions addressing the chemical, thermodynamic, kinetic, and multiphase behavior of these materials. Studies integrating experimental methods, modeling, simulation, or hybrid physics–machine learning approaches are welcome. Practical implications for upgrading, enhanced recovery, emulsification, surface processing, flow assurance, and environmental assessment are of particular interest.

To support transparency and reproducibility, authors are encouraged to share models, datasets, algorithms, and other digital resources as supplementary material or through open repositories.

Topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

-Chemistry and colloidal behavior of asphaltenes, resins, and heavy fractions;

-Thermodynamic and phase-behavior modeling applied to heavy oils and bitumen;

-Emulsions, wettability, and interfacial phenomena;

-Upgrading reactions, catalytic and thermal processes;

-Enhanced recovery and flow assurance in viscous oil systems;

-Experimental–computational integration for property prediction and process design.

-Environmental impacts, sustainability metrics, mitigation strategies, and greener chemical systems in heavy-oil production and processing.

I look forward to your contributions to this Special Issue.

Sincerely,

Prof. Dr. George Simonelli
Prof. Dr. Luiz Carlos L. Santos
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• bitumen
• heavy oil
• asphaltenes
• thermodynamic modeling
• phase behavior
• upgrading processes
• flow assurance
• rheology
• process simulation