Mapping technique for oil refining processes and products

Abstract The technique is proposed for visualizing the product compositions and the refractodenses (trajectories) of oil refinery processes, based on measuring the refractive index and density of the liquid product flows of operating procedures, computing the specific refraction and refraction intercept, and constructing a Kurtz-Lorentz identification map, the center of which is the “polymethylene center”. Trajectories-refractodenses of the processes of atmospheric-vacuum distillation of oil, catalytic reforming, hydrocracking of vacuum and heavy gas oil, products of secondary oil refining (motor gasoline, diesel fuel, catalytic cracking gasoline, light catalytic cracking gas oil) and their fractional distillation have been constructed. An express method is also proposed for evaluating the group hydrocarbon compositions of straight-run oil fractions, upon which we propose a three-digit composition marking of straight-run fractions. It is shown that the logarithms of isomeric alkanes contents in straight-run oil fractions are linearly correlated with their molar enthalpies of vaporization.