Studies on Volatile Characteristics of Middle Distillates and Their Interdependency

摘要

Standard test methods such as those published in American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM)/Institute of Petroleum/Universal Oil Product are often used to characterize the fuel's properties. However, these chemical/physical characterization methods are not only expensive and protracted but also require a large quantity of samples. Every flammable liquid has vapor pressure, which is a function of its boiling point. The distillation and flash point are volatility-dependent characteristics; therefore, these properties are temperature dependent. Most researchers have derived the correlation of flash point with boiling point and vapor pressure for pure organic compounds. The present study proposes a user-friendly empirical model with a correlation technique to predict flash point using ASTM distillation data of middle distillates. In this study, 47 middle distillate samples were taken to predict the flash point with 5 and 10% volume recovery temperature of ASTM D-86 and volume average boiling point (VABP) separately. It was observed that the most appropriate prediction of flash point was with 5% recovery temperature of ASTM D-86 with an R 0.997. This correlation model was compared with different models and found to be comparatively better and user friendly.