Tracking aromaticity changes in heavy hydrocarbon processing by monitoring changes in electrical resistivity

In this work, the changes in electrical resistivities of a vacuum residuum are analyzed to determine pyrolysis reaction rates at different temperatures during high temperature processing. Fractions of the residual oil from vacuum distillation were treated at a constant and uniform temperature, and electrical resistance was related to aromaticity. The results show that resistivity behaves like a first order decay-like thermal cracking reaction. This method could replace chemical methods used to determine the temperature necessary for thermal cracking reactions and the kinetic parameters of heavy petroleum fractions.