Lube oil extraction plants

Lube oil extraction plants often use phenol as solvent. Phenol is used because of its solvent power with a wide range of feed stocks and its ease of recovery. Phenol preferentially dissolves aromatic-type hydrocarbons from the feed stock and improves its oxidation stability and to some extent its color. Phenol extraction can be used over the entire viscosity range of lube distillates and deasphalted oils. The phenol solvent extraction separation is primarily by molecular type or composition. In order to accomplish a separation by solvent extraction, it is necessary that two liquid phases be present. In phenol solvent extraction of lubricating oils these two phases are an oil-rich phase and a phenol-rich phase. Tne oil-rich phase or raffinate solution consists of the "treated" oil from which undesirable naphthenic and aromatic components have been removed plus some dissolved phenol. The phenol-rich phase or extract solution consists mainly of the bulk of the phenol plus the undesirable components removed from the oil feed. The oil materials remaining... [Pg.231]

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