Liquid phase plasma for in-situ hydrogenation of heavy oil model compound (n-hexadecane)

Abstract

Hydrogenation is an effective way to improve the efficiency of heavy oil utilization. In order to fully make interactions between active species such as hydrogen radicals with heavy oil, an innovative heavy oil upgrading method for in-situ hydrogenation by liquid phase discharge with non-uniform electric field was applied. In this work, experiments on discharge frequency and single discharge energy were made to discuss the calorific value in n-hexadecane (a heavy oil model compound). It was found that when the single discharge energy was in the range of 2.22–6.18 mJ, the calorific value gradually increased as the single discharge energy increased. The result also showed that when the discharge frequency reached 1.7 kHz, the hydrogenation performance was significantly better. In addition, the calorific value in conversion part increased by 10.16% when the discharge time reached 30 s compared to the original, which further provide sufficient evidence for the fast in-situ plasma-enabled hydrogenation.