Studies on Kuwait Crudes. 1. Composition Analysis of Some Asphalts and Their Sulfurized Products

Abstract

The differences in the chemical composition of five asphalts and one air-blown bitumen, obtained from Kuwait crudes, were studied using the densimetric technique. Two asphalts were then reacted with different weight percent of sulfur at 220 °C, and the effect of sulfur was followed by studying the composition analysis of the products. The results obtained revealed that the reaction with sulfur leads to an increase in the percent of asphaltene, which contains most of the bonded sulfur. It was also found that the above reaction increases the average number of carbon atoms per molecule as well as the aromaticity. The addition of up to 5 wt % of sulfur led to no significant increase in the sulfur content of the products.

Kinetic Modeling of Hydrocarbon Conversion to Asphaltenes in Sulphur-treated Asphalts

“…The conditions of reaction were chosen from the previous works reported in the literature (Petrossi et al, 1972;Al-Farkh et al, 1978;Obiaga et al, 1982). Petrossi et al (1972) have shown that sulphur at its melting point (about 140 • C) enters into chemical linkages with asphalt hydrocarbons forming polar compounds.…”