The research reported in this publication was partially supported by the Saudi Electricity Company (SEC) and the Clean Combustion Research Center (CCRC) of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). The authors thank Drs. Long Jiang and Aiping Chen for their work on asphaltene separation and analytical chemistry. This research used resources of the Core Labs at the KAUST. We also thank Dr Wen Zhang for the FT ICR-MS analysis and Dr Salvedin Telalovic for the TGA–MS.
