Two procedures have been developed for structural modeling of petroleum fractions based on mixture viscosity and Watson K factor. The representative molecules of paraffinic, naphthenic and aromatic hydrocarbons, based upon Ruzicka’s structural model, have been determined for lube-oil cut SAE 10 from Tehran oil refinery. Unlike previous methods, the newly developed procedures do not require time-consuming and costly laboratory data such as true boiling point profile. Good agreement between predictions of the new models and experimental results has been observed.
Moreover, the proposed methods take less run-time than previous models due to less experimental and computational complexities. The results indicate that Ruzicka’s procedure, based on vapor pressure, is only applicable for light hydrocarbon mixtures, while the new methods can be applied for structural modeling of a wide range of petroleum fractions. Furthermore, as a result of this study, the application of a vapor pressure constraint leads to a higher degree of accuracy than the earlier suggested constraint, partial pressure, by Ruzicka.
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