Automated Prediction of the Liquid Paraffins Viscosity

Abstract

The article deals with an approach to the construction of self-adjusting automatic control systems, in which parametric adaptation occurs when the properties of technological raw materials change during its processing due to changes in the parameters of state. A new algorithm for predicting the viscosity of hydrocarbon liquids is proposed, which can be used as part of the control systems software. The main dependences are obtained on the basis of reliable experimental data on the viscosity of normal C8–C20 alkanes, which are similar in properties to commodity petroleum products. The data of physicochemical analysis are used as the initial data for the computation. Based on the theory of corresponding states, a new approach to scaling the viscosity using a set of characteristic parameters is developed and technique for their determination is proposed. The method is tested in the temperature range (0.4 – 0.7)TC at pressures up to 10 MPa. It is shown that the deviation of the predicted values from the experimental data is comparable to the error of the viscosity measurement.