Chemical kinetics of SARA fractions pyrolysis: Resins

Abstract

This work presents a predictive and generally applicable approach to resin pyrolysis modeling. Resins extracted from heavy fuel oil 380 (HFO) and vacuum residue oil (VRO) were tested for elemental composition, chemical structure, thermal degradation behavior, and distribution of pyrolysis products using different state-of-the-art experimental techniques. The in-house experiments, together with extensive literature research, guided the formulation of five pseudo-components for the definition of a fuel surrogate. The atomic ratios of the surrogate molecules were defined to be able to replicate the elemental composition of all the data with their linear combination. This approach makes the model flexible and readily applicable to any resin sample just by knowing its elemental composition. The kinetics mechanism was developed by coupling each pseudo-component with a decomposition reaction pathway. The choice of the kinetics parameters was driven by the experimental information available. The model presented a satisfactory agreement with experimental data used for the validation. The kinetic model represents a step of a more comprehensive project aimed at reconstructing the chemical kinetics of heavy and residual oils as a combination of their saturate, aromatic, resin, and asphaltene (SARA) fractions.