Used Oil Recovery by Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Extraction

The supercritical carbon dioxide is applied in many separation processes as solvent. Due to this applicability of carbon dioxide, in this study, it is applied to oil refinery. In order to find the maximum efficiency, the experiment was conducted in the ranges of 150-210 bar of pressure, and 35-65°C of temperature. Based on this study, the changes in pressure show strong effect on the efficiency, and when it increases the efficiency increases, too. Despite of the pressure, when the temperature increases at a constant pressure, the density of supercritical carbon dioxide decreases. As a results, its solubility in decreases and the oil viscosity and mass transfer rate from oil increases. According to the results, the optimized operational condition to get the highest efficiency is investigated as 210bar of pressure and 45°C of temperature.