Crude oil assay
Continuous monitoring of crude oil quality provides timely and valuable information which is useful to operational and
market producers, traders, refineries, and other participates in the hydrocarbon supply-chain.
Assays come in all types yet fundamentally are performed in laboratories and research centers using glassware in bench
scale sizing to simulate refinery distillation towers, crude oils feedstocks are cut into petroleum products all the way
through to the reside.
The primary use is to evaluate the performance of the hydrocarbons and evaluate the financial worth of each crude oil in
different refinery conditions or petroleum marketing conditions.
Often times fields of production for example, the Saudis have variety of world scale crudes in the market from Saudi
light to the heavy to the mediums to the ultra-light and at any given point, some of these fields may be very mature, so
the crude quality is relatively stable and may go back and do some infill drilling and change the molecular setup.
In other words, typically as a general rule, if a field changes more than about three API, people will tend to want to
restart that in some fashion or other, typically some level of crude assay.
Routine Laboratory Tests (RLT)
These tests have been adopted become they can be;
1. Performed quickly.
2. Easily duplicated by ordinary laboratory technicians.
3. Interpreted as a function of the performance of the product while in use.
They are not usually scientifically exact, and hence the procedures for the tests are carefully specified and must be
faithfully followed if the results are to be dependable.
Routine tests are universally used for controlling refinery operations.
Tests may be conducted at 2 hours intervals during the initial operation of a plant, and very quickly the test results
assume importance as a criterion of plant operation.
Cut point:
A cut point is defined as that temperature on the whole crude TBP curve that represents the limits (upper and lower) of
a fraction to be produced. Consider the curve shown in below figure for a typical crude oil TBP curve.
1
Figure: Cut point and end point
A fraction with an upper cut point of 100°F produces a yield of 20% volume of the whole crude as that fraction. The
next adjacent fraction has a lower cut point of 100°F and an upper one of 200°F this represents a yield of
30 − 20% = 10% volume on crude.
Initial boiling point: The temperature at which the first drop of distillate collected from the condenser is called initial
boiling point.
Middle boiling point: The temperature at which the 50% of distillate collected from the condenser is called middle
boiling point.
Final boiling point: The maximum temperature at which the distillate cannot be collected is called final boiling point.
End points: While the cut point is an ideal temperature used to define the yield of a fraction, the end points are the
actual terminal temperatures of a fraction produced commercially.
Mid boiling point components:
The physical properties of an oil found to vary gradually throughout the range of compounds that constitute the oil. The
properties such as color, specific gravity, and viscosity are found to be different for each drop or fraction of the material
distilled. The rate at which these properties change from drop to drop may plot as mid per cent curves. For the first
component Mid volume percentage point components, take an arbitrary temperature point A. Draw a horizontal line
through this from the 0% volume. Extend the line until the area between the line and the curve on both sides of the
temperature point A are equal. The length of the horizontal line measures the yield of component A having a mid-
boiling point A °F. Repeat for the next adjacent component and continue until the whole curve is divided into these mid
boiling point components.
Volume of Residue=Volume of sample−Volume of distillate collected
2
Figure 2: Example of mid boiling point.
Mid volume percentage point components:
Sometimes the assay has been so constructed as to correlate the crude oil properties against components on a mid
volume percentage basis. In using such data as this the TBP curve is divided into mid volume point components. This is
easier than the mid boiling point concept and requires only that the curve be divided into a number of volumetric
sections. The mid volume figure for each of these sections is merely the arithmetic mean of the volume range of each
component.
Mid per Cent curves:
The physical properties of an oil are found to vary gradually throughout the range of compounds that constitute the oil.
Distillation is a means of arranging these chemical compounds in the order of their boiling points. The properties such
as color, specific gravity, and viscosity are found to be different for each drop or fraction of the material distilled. The
rate at which these properties change from drop to drop may be plotted as mid per cent curves, such as curves 2, 3, and
4 in the figure 1.
The refinery engineer is most often interested in determining the properties of a commercial width of fractions. In
reality, the gravity or viscosity of a fraction is an average of the properties of the many drops that constitute the fraction.
- If each drop is equally different from the last drop and from the succeeding one, then the drop that distillate at
exactly half of the fraction has the same property as the average of all the drops. This would be the conditions
for a mid per cent curve that is a straight line.
- Mid per cet curves are ever exactly straight lines (figure 2), but they are substantially stright through any short
range of percetage.
- For a short range of percentage the average property is equal to the property at the mid–point of the fraction.
- The arithmetical average of the properties of these small fractions is the property of the total or large fractions,
or even the entire sample.
3
The mechanism of using the foregoing principles can be best illustrated by an example.
Figure 1: True Boiling Point evaluation curves of a 37.3 API intermediate–paraffin base crude oil.
Example:
compute the specific gravity of a 41.4 API (0.8183 S.G.) mixed–base crude oil from the specific gravity mid per cent
curve.
Table 1: Tabulation of the crude oil fractions.
Fraction No. Rage of percentage S.G Fraction No. Rage of percentage S.G
1 0–5 0.6506 11 50 – 55 0.8280
2 10 – 5 0.6936 12 60 – 55 0.8388
3 15 – 10 0.7227 13 65 – 60 0.8498
4 20 – 15 0.7420 14 70 – 65 0.8602
5 25 – 20 0.7583 15 75 – 70 0.8713
6 30 – 25 0.7720 16 80 – 75 0.8827
7 35 – 30 0.844 17 85 – 80 0.8939
8 40 – 35 0.7958 18 90 – 85 0.9065
9 45 – 40 0.8067 19 100 – 90 0.9340
10 50 – 45 0.8170
4
Figure 2: Gravity mid per cent curve
