Hydrodynamic Cavitation as Oil Pretreatment Prior to Distillation

Abstract

Hydrodynamic cavitation has been employed in literature to distort the structure of crude oil as a way of its intensification prior to refining, with majority paying attention to adding additives in order to improve the yield. No attention has been paid to varying the storage time of the crude after cavitation. Hence, it was thought necessary to vary the storage time after cavitation in order to increase the yield of crude oil. 350 g of the feedstock was characterized and then continuously circulated through an orifice/cavitation device for 30s, then it was stored in an airtight plastic container. The storage time was varied from 2 hours to 240 hours for different runs. True boiling Point distillation for 295g of the cavitated crude was carried out after. The results showed that there was a strong correlation between the changes in the density of the stored cavitated crude and the yield of the crude. The yield of lighter distillate/fractions increases with reduction in density of stored cavitated crude and the yield of heavier distillate increases with increase in density of cavitated crude. The increase in the yield of light fractions was attributed to cold cracking of heavier molecules in the crude and the increase in yield of heavier fractions was attributed to the recombination reactions of the radical molecules in the crude. The increase in the overall yield when compared with untreated crude can be achieved by striking a balance between cold cracking and recombination reactions which occurred at 122 hours of storage after cavitation