Avaliação da qualidade de ignição para utilização de petróleos pesados e asfálticos como combustíveis marítimos

Abstract

Heavy streams from crude oil refining can be used to prepare fuel oils for industrial or maritime purposes, the latter known as bunker fuel. In order to prepare them, it is necessary to set viscosity to its appropriate value by dilution with lighter fractions from petroleum refining. While industrial usage of fuel oils is decreasing significantly due to environmental restrictions, the bunker fuel market shows an important increasing face to the growing in world maritime trading. Production of heavy, extra heavy and asphaltic crude oils in Brazil is rising and more complex refining process are required to convert them into lighter petroleum products. Because of that, the amount and the quality of available streams to prepare bunker fuel are decreasing. The present dissertation evaluates the feasibility of using heavy and asphaltic crude oils to prepare bunker fuel without traditional processing into petroleum refineries. The comparison of ignition and combustion quality considering the bunker fuel prepared from residual streams are made considering two different methodologies. After pre-treating the crude oils to prepare bunker fuels, that mixture shows a better ignition and combustion performance than those prepared with residual streams. Finally, this study compares the effect of different diluent streams and the heavy fraction contribution to product s ignition and combustion quality