Abstract
A petroleum refinery is a collection of unit operations, such as fractionation towers, pumps, and heat exchangers. Analysis and design of these units require knowledge of the thermodynamic and physical properties of the petroleum fluids. Designing a crude distillation tower requires knowledge on how hydrocarbons in crude oil are distributed on each tray of the tower, that is vapor–liquid distribution, and the densities of the mixture. Heat exchanger design depends on enthalpies, thermal conductivity and viscosity of certain streams. This chapter discusses thermophysical properties of petroleum fractions and crude oils. It presents thermophysical properties required for the design and operation of almost all processing equipment in a refinery. Due to the complexity of the composition of petroleum fractions and crude oils, it is not possible to measure or calculate accurately all of those properties. Furthermore, calculation methods developed for pure hydrocarbons are not always applicable. Therefore, over the years chemical and petroleum refining engineers have developed special methods or correlations to estimate the properties of petroleum fraction from easily measured properties like normal boiling point and specific gravity. Such methods and schemes characterize those petroleum fractions.
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