Abstract
<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify; line-height: normal;"><span style="letter-spacing: -0.1pt; font-family: 'Century Gothic','sans-serif'; font-size: 8pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: ES; mso-bidi-language: EN-US;">Five different Colombian vacuum residues were thermally decomposed in a thermogravimetric analyzer. Three heating rates were employed to heat the sample up to 650°C. The kinetic analysis was performed by the Coats-Redfern method to describe the non-isothermal pyrolysis of the residua, a reaction model where the reaction order gradually increases from first to second order is proposed and an excellent agreement of the experimental with the calculated data is presented. The results also indicate that the pyrolysis of a vacuum residue cannot be modeled by a single reaction mechanism.</span></p>
Highlights
The bottom product of a vacuum distillation unit is known as vacuum residua
It can be seen how the weight of the sample decreases as a result of the pyrolysis reactions that form distillables and coke
The distillables are evacuated with the carrier gas and the coke remains in the container
Summary
The bottom product of a vacuum distillation unit is known as vacuum residua It is an extremely heavy hydrocarbon with API gravity under 12 and it is sometimes solid at room temperature. Due to the increase of heavy oil production around the world, the vacuum residua production has increased and refiners have been searching for ways to make it more profitable. In the case of hydrocarbons, as the temperature rises the sample decomposes into lighter hydrocarbons and coke, which remains in the sample container. This technique is widely used for kinetic analysis, since the experiments are and quickly performed. The most commonly used carrier gases are nitrogen and argon at flow rates of 10 – 150 ml/min
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