Challenges in Petroleum Characterization—A Review

Abstract

252 literature sources and about 5000 crude oil assays were reviewed in this work. The review has shown that the petroleum characterization can be classified in three categories: crude oil assay; SARA characterization; and molecular characterization. It was found that the range of petroleum property variation is so wide that the same crude oil property cannot be measured by the use of a single standard method. To the best of our knowledge for the first time the application of the additive rule to predict crude oil asphaltene content from that of the vacuum residue multiplied by the vacuum residue TBP yield was examined. It was also discovered that a strong linear relation between the contents of C5-, and C7-asphaltenes in crude oil and derived thereof vacuum residue fraction exists. The six parameter Weibull extreme function showed to best fit the TBP data of all crude oil types, allowing construction of a correct TBP curve and detection of measurement errors. A new SARA reconstitution approach is proposed to overcome the poor SARA analysis mass balance when crude oils with lower density are analyzed. The use of a chemometric approach with combination of spectroscopic data was found very helpful in extracting information about the composition of complex petroleum matrices consisting of a large number of components.

Understanding Refractive Index Changes in Homologous Series of Unbranched Organic Compounds Based on Beer's Law

“…For alkane derivatives the concept works all‐encompassing. This is an important new aspect for a better and correct understanding of technical analyses in the petroleum industry for alkane mixtures [14,36–38] . We expect this concept to be also successful for mixtures of solvents (in this case it would certainly be the main chromophore of the solvents’ molecules that determines the optical properties), like it already is in explaining solvatochromic band shifts and intensity changes of bands of dyes in solvents based on the Lorentz‐Lorenz relation [39] …”

“…This is an important new aspect for a better and correct understanding of technical analyses in the petroleum industry for alkane mixtures. [14,[36][37][38] We expect this concept to be also successful for mixtures of solvents (in this case it would certainly be the main chromophore of the solvents' molecules that determines the optical properties), like it already is in explaining solvatochromic band shifts and intensity changes of bands of dyes in solvents based on the Lorentz-Lorenz relation. [39] Instead of the density, the refractive index of homologues series should better be plotted versus the molar concentration of the main UV-chromophore, the CÀ H bond, which actually causes the refractive index changes.…”

Advanced bioremediation by an amalgamation of nanotechnology and modern artificial intelligence for efficient restoration of crude petroleum oil-contaminated sites: a prospective study

“…Apart from hydrocarbon compounds, non-hydrocarbon compounds, especially sulphur, nitrogen, and oxygen-containing compounds, are also present in crude oil (Mello et al 2012 ; Speight 2015 ; Shishkova et al 2022 ). Even metallic compounds are found in traces in crude oil from different regions.…”

A Kinetic Approach to the Pyrolysis of Naphthenic Acids

“…To provide an additional supply for the ever-growing fuel demand, high acid crude oils are considered as a good option, to be used as raw feedstocks in crude oil refineries. 1,2 Crude oils that have a total acid number (TAN) over 0.5 are labeled as acidic. 3 TAN is measured by titrating 1 g of crude oil with KOH to assess the required milligrams of KOH.…”