Analyzing heavy ends of crude: Bartlett oil. [Solfrac process production

Abstract

A heavy crude oil produced from the Bartlett field in southeastern Kansas by the Solfrac process developed by ERDA was characterized by procedures developed, in large part, by the ERDA Energy Research Centers in Bartlesville, Okla., and Laramie, Wyo., through the American Petroleum Institute Research Project 60. After removal of the solvent used in the Solfrac process, two distillate fractions accounting for about 50 percent of the solvent-free crude were prepared and analyzed by a combination of techniques including acid and base extractions, adsorption chromatography, gel permeation chromatography (GPC), mass spectrometry (MS), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometry, and gas chromatography. Concentrations of major hydrocarbon and sulfur compound types were well within the ranges observed for five previously studied crude oils, but acid and base fractions were smaller for the Bartlett crude. High-resolution mass spectral data for the Bartlett crude showed the presence of some oxygenate material which were not determined in the previous studies of petroleum crudes. These data plus physical and chemical properties determined by the ERDA/BERC routine crude oil analyses provided an extensive characterization of the portion of Bartlett crude boiling below 540/sup 0/C. These data are valuable for determining appropriate refining processes for efficiently upgrading this crude to more useful products.