Artificial Intelligence has learned to estimate oil viscosity

A group of Skoltech scientists developed machine learning (ML) algorithms that can teach artificial intelligence (AI) to determine oil viscosity based on nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) data. The new method can come in handy for the petroleum industry and other sectors, which have to rely on indirect measurements to characterize a substance. The research was published in the Energy and Fuels journal. An important parameter of oil and petrochemicals, viscosity has implications for production and processing, while helping to better understand and model the natural processes in the reservoir. Standard oil viscosity assessment and monitoring techniques are very time and money consuming and sometimes technically unfeasible.