Abstract

High concentrations of fuel-range hydrocarbons may be recovered from heavier alkyl-aromatic compounds in crude oil after supercritical water (SCW) treatment. Arabian Heavy (AH) crude oil was treated in SCW and analyzed using two-dimensional gas chromatography (GC × GC-FID). Cracking mechanisms were investigated using the model compound hexylbenzene under similar SCW treatment conditions. The results of the model compound experiments were compared to predictions of a kinetic model built by the Reaction Mechanism Generator (RMG). AH crude cracked significantly during SCW treatment. The GC-observable mass fraction increased by 90%. We conducted studies on the distilled samples of crude oil and found that significant changes in the composition of the SCW-treated heavy fraction occurred. Significant formation of aliphatic hydrocarbons and small-chain BTX-type compounds were found in the SCW-processed samples. Hexylbenzene conversions differed between the crude oil studies and the model compound studies. The me...

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