Oil Characterization from Simulation of Experimental Distillation Data

The characterization of crude oil involves dividing the oil into pseudocomponents and allocating mole fractions, molar mass, specific gravity, average boiling point, and critical properties to each component. The characterization is typically based on distillation data reported in terms of true boiling points. Standard assay types such as the ASTM D86 or ASTM D1160 vacuum distillation do not provide well established saturated bubble temperatures and require empirical interconversion curves to convert the assay data into true boiling point (TBP) data. Recently developed assays such as the ASTM D5236 and Bruno’s new distillation assay methodology do provide well-defined saturated bubble temperatures that correspond to actual thermodynamic state points but lack an established interconversion method to a TBP, that is, a method to determine the TBP of the fluid based on the measured temperatures of the assay. In this work, a methodology is presented to determine pseudocomponent mole fractions that match the bo...