Journal of Nanoanalysis
Volume:2 Issue: 3, Dec 2015

Naphthenic acids and TAN are one of the ever-increasing crucial problems in oil, shale oil and sand oil industry and also environment protection. Furtherer, they increases the corrosion of some parts of a refinery and transport pipelines and also can create nanoemulsions and make complicated the refining process especially in desalters. To prevent these problems it is important to first obtain a basic knowledge about the distribution/structure of Naphthenic acids and their relationship with TAN. This might be useful for troubleshooting of probable problems when the feed of refinery changes. In the present work, two fractions of Soroush-Norowz blend crude oil were analyzed to obtain their naphthenic acids concentration and TAN. At the second step, these two fractions were physically to sub-fractions by 25 °C intervals. After that, their naphthenic acids concentration and TAN was determined to obtain a detailed view about the distribution of naphthenic acids and TAN of each sub-fraction. In addition, the obtained results gave us a view point about the overall molecular structure of naphthenic acids presents in the Soroush-Norowz blend crude oil and can guide us toward better understanding of chemical structure of mentioned crude oil and consequently better designing of oil refinery in order to minimize the corrosion and also upper the performance of some special units such as desalters.

Hydrogen sulfide is one of the most dangerous contaminants in crude oil and natural gas that have to be removed prior to the transfer and refining. In this study, hydrophobic ionic liquid, i.e. 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium methylflour, [EMIM] [NTf2], was used as scavenger for the reduction of the H2S. Due to its ionic nature, [EMIM] [NTf2] forms nanoemulsion in crude oil media and hence can dissolve H2S polar molecules within its core. Determination of H2S was carried out using well-known UOP-163 potentiometric titration. The effect of [EMIM] [NTf2] on the H2S concentration was investigated via two methods dynamic and static. Dynamic method performed to check the effect of required dosage for the removal of H2S and also investigate effect of contact time. In the static methods a number of tests were designed with central composite design (CCD) to investigate the effect of three factors, i.e. scavenger dosage, reaction time and temperature, as well as the interaction between them on the concentration of H2S via response surface methodology (RSM). Among these three factors and according to the F value, scavenger dosage and time had the great influence on the response, respectively. In comparison, temperature had very low effect on the response. The resulted model was also statistically significant with non-important LOF index.

BTX compounds (Benzene, toluene and xylenes) are the main pollutants in air and fuels. Recent environmental legislations are limited the amount of these materials specially the amount of benzene in gasoline due to its carcinogen effects on health. In this research, the BTX hydrogenation was carried out using nanoparticles of Co supported on MWCNTs (multiwall carbon nanotubes) and AC (activated carbon) in liquid phase according to experimental design techniques and results were analyzed by response surface methodology (RSM). The benzene, toluene and xylenes are hydrogenated to the corresponding saturated compounds at 64.45, 34.10 and 17.41 % yields respectively under 35 bar pressure at 200 °C. Also it is found that the Co/MWCNTs can be considered as candidate catalyst for benzene reducing in gasoline fuel. The catalysts were synthesized through wet impregnation method and characterized using XRD, TGA, TPR and TEM techniques.