Abstract—The world reserves of conventional light oils are decreasing and being replaced by an increasing amount of heavy oils. Heptylbenzene (HPB) and hexylbenzene (HXB) are compounds that are also present in heavy oils. This study is aimed at comparing the supercritical hydrolysis reaction of HPB and HXB producing low molecular weight hydrocarbons. The dramatic change in the ionic product and the dielectric constant of water under supercritical conditions makes it an acid or a base catalyst. In this study, water was used without any catalyst. The reaction was carried out in an 8.8 mL batch type reactor fabricated from Hastelloy C-276 whose respective design temperature and pressure was 500oC and 50 MPa. The comparison study on the ability of supercritical water (SCW) to decompose HPB and HXB were studied at temperatures of 450-475oC and water partial pressure (WPP) of 35 MPa. The experimental results show that conversion as well as production of low molecular weight compounds was high at water to oil ratio of 10, a reaction time of 60 min and a temperature of 475oC. The supercritical water was found to be potential to convert the heavy oils into the lighter oils without the addition of any catalyst.
Index Terms—Batch reactor, heavy oil, heptylbenzene, hexylbenzene, supercritical water.
P. C. Mandal and S. Chowdhury are with the Department of Chemical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Petronas, Bandar Seri Iskandar, 31750 Tronoh, Perak, Malaysia (e-mail: pradip.mandal@petronas.com.my, sujan.chowdhury@petronas.com.my).
M. Sasaki is with the Institute of Pulsed Power Science, Kumamoto University, 2-39-1 Kurokami, Kumamoto 860-8555, Japan (e-mail: msasaki@kumamoto-u.ac.jp).
[PDF]
Cite: Pradip C. Mandal, Sujan Chowdhury, and Mitsuru Sasaki, "Comparison Study of Heptylbenzene and Hexylbenzene Decomposition under Supercritical Water," International Journal of Chemical Engineering and Applications vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 156-160, 2016.
