Ash from petroleum products

Tests of the fuel oil fraction normally include determination of density or specific gravity, total sulfur, aniline point, total acid number, naphthalenes content, smoke point, total nitrogen, viscosity, cloud point (ASTM Test Method D2500, Cloud Point of Petroleum Oils), pour point (ASTM Test Method D97, Pour Point of Petroleum Oils), and calculation of cetane index. Corrosiveness, ash (ASTM Test Method D482, Ash from Petroleum Products), and carbon residue might also be determined in more thorough evaluations. 

D482 Test Method for Ash from Petroleum Products ... 

American Society for Testing and Materials, Ash from petroleum products, D482-95. West Conshohocken, PA 19428. 

Fuel ash and scrubber sludge from power generation by utilities Oil and gas drilling muds byproduct brine from petroleum production Cement kiln dust... 

Commercial production from petroleum ash holds promise as an important source of the element. High-purity ductile vanadium can be obtained by reduction of vanadium trichloride with magnesium or with magnesium-sodium mixtures. 

The heavy vacuum bottoms stream is fed to a Flexicoking unit. This is a commercial (125,126) petroleum process that employs circulating fluidized beds at low (0.3 MPa (50 psi)) pressures and intermediate temperatures, ie, 480—650°C in the coker and 815—980°C in the gasifier, to produce high yields of hquids or gases from organic material present in the feed. Residual carbon is rejected with the ash from the gasifier fluidized bed. The total Hquid product is a blend of streams from Hquefaction and the Flexicoker. 

This most widely used black pigment is also in the top 50 chemicals. About 4.0 billion lb of carbon black were made in 2001. Commercial value was 1.4 billion at 35C/lb, but 93% of this is used for reinforcement of elastomers. Only 7% is used in paints and inks. Carbon black is made by the partial oxidation of residual hydrocarbons from crude oil. See Chapter 6, Section 7.2. The hydrocarbons are usually the heavy by-product residues from petroleum cracking, ideally high in aromatic content and low in sulfur and ash, bp around 260°C. 

Petroleum became the primary source of hydrocarbons for chemical feedstocks, beginning in about 1850 with the discovery of easily extracted cmde oil in eastern Pennsylvania and in the Ural mountains of Russia. The gases from the primary distillation of cmde oil and the light products from FCC, catalyticfreforming, and hydroprocessing are ideal mixtures of C2 to Cg alkanes that can be used to make many chemicals. Petroleum products are also cleaner than those from coal, producing no ash and less sulfur. 

Fixed carbon is the material remaining after the determination of moisture, volatile matter, and ash. It is, in fact, a measure of the solid combustible material in coal after the expulsion of volatile matter, and like determination of the carbon residue of petroleum and petroleum products (Speight, 1999, 2001) represents the approximate yield of thermal coke from coal (Zimmerman, 1979). 

Derivation (1) Calcium reduction of vanadium pentoxide yields 99.8+% pure ductile vanadium (2) aluminum, cerium, etc. reduction produces a less pure product (3) solvent extraction of petroleum ash or ferrophosphorus slag from phosphorus production (4) electrolytic refining using a molten salt electrolyte containing vanadium chloride. 

World production of vanadium from ores, petroleum concentrates, and slags has remained fairly constant over the last few years and is presently around 34,300 tons (Hilliard 1987). The levels of vanadium recovered from petroleum residues, ashes, and spent catalysts throughout the world are not available however, within the United States and Japan, recovery of vanadium and its compounds, in particular vanadium pentoxide and ferrovanadium, increased between 1983 and 1987. 

We have examined examples in which the formation of a dense deposit is accompanied by the formation of a loose deposit. Also possible are cases in which tacky and dense deposits are formed together, for example, in the combustion of residual fuel oil. The ash from residual fuel oil consists of metal corrosion products (iron salts and oxides), residues from substances used in the caustic and acid treatment of petroleum, salts from drilling water, contaminant particles, and particles of unburned carbon (soot and carboids). When the individual components of the ash interact with each other and with the gas medium, dense and tacky deposits are formed. Even though residual fuel oil combustion gives much less ash than is obtained in anthracite combustion, by a factor of 50 less than in peat combustion, by a factor of 100 and less than in shale combustion, by a factor of 200, the deposits formed by the fuel oil com-... 

Finally, recycling activities produce small quantities of vanadium pentoxide. The source material used comes from spent catalysts from the petrochemical industry and fly ash, the later being produced by the combustion of oil emulsion in thermal power stations. Commercial production of vanadium from petroleum is promosing as an important source of the element. 

This test method covers the determination of ash in the range 0.001-0.180 mass %, from distillate and residual fuels, gas turbine fuels, crude oils, lubricating oils, waxes, and other petroleum products, in which any ash-forming materials present are normally considered to be undesirable impurities or contaminants (Note 1). The test method is limited to petroleum products which are free from added ash-forming additives, including certain phosphorus compounds (Note 2). 

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