Learning about distillation curves as a way to define a process stream from crude petroleum

Abstract

The advanced courses of Separation Processes use to include some reference to the different types of distillation curves, such as the True Boiling Point (TBP) curves, in order to characterize crude petroleum or its derivatives. The concept of pseudocomponents as well as the way to extract them from a TBP curve can be easily understood by reading classical bibliographic references. Chemical process simulation software packages serve as a useful tool that, once the desired number of pseudocomponents to be considered has been specified, automatically generate them. Nevertheless, the lack of correspondence between cuts of a TBP curve and zones with slight temperature changes makes difficult to identify pseudocomponents and to decide on the adequate number of pseudocomponents to be defined. In this work, a very simple exercise is proposed to introduce the idea of TBP distillation curves in the classroom and to explore their characteristics through the analysis of the influence of the number of extracted pseudocomponents.