Page 18 - Characterization and Properties of Petroleum Fractions

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Preface 16:4

Scientists do not belong to any particular country, ideology, or religion, they belong
to the world community
THE FIELD OF Petroleum Characterization and Physical Properties has received significant
attention in recent decades with the expansion of computer simulators and advanced
analytical tools and the availability of more accurate experimental data. As a result of
globalization, structural changes are taking place in the chemical and petroleum indus-
try. Engineers working in these industries are involved with process simulators to design
and operate various units and equipment. Nowadays, a large number of process simula-
tors are being produced that are equipped with a variety of thermodynamic models and
choice of predictive methods for the physical properties. A person familiar with devel-
opment of such methods can make appropriate use of these simulators saving billions
of dollars in costs in investment, design, manufacture, and operation of various units
in these industries. Petroleum is a complex mixture of thousands of hydrocarbon com-
pounds and it is produced from an oil well in a form of reservoir fluid. A reservoir fluid is
converted to a crude oil through surface separation units and then the crude is sent to a
refinery to produce various petroleum fractions and hydrocarbon fuels such as kerosene,
gasoline, and fuel oil. Some of the refinery products are the feed to petrochemical plants.
More than half of world energy sources are from petroleum and probably hydrocarbons
will remain the most convenient and important source of energy and as a raw material
st
for the petrochemical plants at least throughout the 21 century. Other fossil type fu-
els such as coal liquids are also mixtures of hydrocarbons although they differ in type
with petroleum oils. From 1970 to 2000, the share of Middle East in the world crude oil
reserves raised from 55 to 65%, but this share is expected to rise even further by 2010–
2020 when we near the peak point where half of oil reserves have been produced. The
world is not running out of oil yet but the era of cheap oil is perhaps over. Therefore,
economical use of the remaining oil and treatment of heavy oils become increasingly
important. As it is discussed in Chapter 1, use of more accurate physical properties for
petroleum fractions has a direct and significant impact on economical operation and
design of petroleum processing and production units which in turn would result in a
significant saving of existing petroleum reserves.
One of the most important tasks in petroleum refining and related processes is the
need for reliable values of the volumetric and thermodynamic properties for pure hy-
drocarbons and their mixtures. They are important in the design and operation of almost
every piece of processing equipment. Reservoir engineers analyze PVT and phase behav-
ior of reservoir fluids to estimate the amount of oil or gas in a reservoir, to determine an
optimum operating condition in a separator unit, or to develop a recovery process for
an oil or gas field. However, the most advanced design approaches or the most sophisti-
cated simulators cannot guarantee the optimum design or operation of a unit if required
input physical properties are not accurate. A process to experimentally determine the
volumetric, thermodynamic, and transport properties for all the industrially important
materials would be prohibitive in both cost and time; indeed it could probably never
be completed. For these reasons accurate estimations of these properties are becoming
increasingly important.
Characterization factors of many types permeate the entire field of physical, ther-
modynamic, and transport property prediction. Average boiling points, specific gravity,
molecular weight, critical temperature, critical pressure, acentric factor, refractive index,
and certain molecular type analysis are basic parameters necessary to utilize methods
of correlation and prediction of the thermophysical properties. For correlating physi-
cal and thermodynamic properties, methods of characterizing undefined mixtures are

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