Study of heavy crude oil upgrading in supercritical water using diverse kinetic approaches

Abstract

Heavy crude oil upgrading under a supercritical water environment has demonstrated to have diverse advantages. For commercial applications, it is necessary to develop mathematical models that can predict the reactive behavior of the different components of crude oil under these operating conditions. However, the consideration of different experimental and modeling approaches can significantly influence the determination and evaluation of reaction rates, which complicates providing essential insights into the reaction system and thus generates numerical simulations and strategies that allow for increasing the efficiency of these processes. Therefore, this study analyzes the effect of the supercritical water atmosphere on the diverse reactions among oil components as well as different kinetic modeling approaches reported in the literature to predict the yields of reactive compounds. Complex kinetic models were developed using proposed reaction schemes and experimental data obtained during the upgrading of heavy crude oil under supercritical water conditions. The predictions with the models show good agreement concerning the experimental data. In addition, it was shown that the conversion of asphaltenes to resins and gas compounds under supercritical conditions presents a significant increase in reaction rates compared with experiments under non-catalytic and catalytic thermal cracking conditions.