(332g) Understanding Distillation Curves: Crude Oils

Refineries process streams with thousands of components. Crude oil is one of these streams. Crude oil makes conventional analytic methods for defining precise chemical compositions of feeds extremely complex and time consuming. The refining industry has developed standardized methods for using batch distillation data from the laboratory for designing continuous distillation units. The normal procedure for these methods is to convert laboratory data to a true boiling point (TBP) distribution for the crude oil or other refinery stream.

Over time the conversion methods have evolved with better laboratory equipment and more data. Modern laboratory technique includes both physical distillations and simulated distillations using chromatography.

This paper includes:

• Review of laboratory physical distillations
• Review of laboratory simulated distillations
• Conversion of different laboratory techniques to true boiling point curves
  • Different operating pressures
  • Different number of stages and reflux
• Introduction to non-standard methods for physical distillations