Evaluation of Micro-Distillation Methodology in Obtaining the Oil Distillation Curve Using Design of Experiments

Abstract

In the evaluation of petroleum, the true boiling point (TBP) curve stands out among the characterization analyzes, as it is fundamental to assist in decision making such as pricing, royalty payment and petroleum valuation. This is possible by defining the yields of petroleum derivatives obtained as a function of their true boiling points. Its obtainment can partially conducted by applying the ASTM D2892 methodology, for fractions with temperatures up to 673 kelvin. Requiring a minimum volume of 1200 mL of oil and an average time of 48 hours. The present work aims to evaluate the feasibility of applying micro-distillation in the construction of the TBP curve, with volume and time reduction using reference oil. For this, established experiments will conducted according to the application of experiment planning and their results will compared with the curve obtained under standard conditions by ASTM D2892. The variables studied were distillation column size, heating rate control and magnetic bar shape. As a result, two conditions provided adjustment to the validation curve across the entire length of the conventional TBP ASTM curve, with the possibility of using columns of different sizes, minimum sample volume of 700 mL and reduction of total time to 16 hours and 40 minutes.