Tailor Made Distillation to Cover Every Need

With another innovative solution, once again the distillation experts at ILUDEST were able to solve a very ambitious customer request by putting into practice: optimised separation of crude oil into high temperature fractions, a process which cannot be effected by using one of the common ASTM-standards sych as D2892 or D5236.

The ASTM D2892 Method is all about fractionating crude oil samples by using a packed column (approx. 15 theoretical plates) up to approx. 400°CAET (2 mmHg). Whilst with ASTM D5236 one can fractionate crude oil samples up to approx. 540…565°CAET (0.1 mmHg), but by using an open-tube column (approx. 2 theoretical plates). Hence, the overlapping range of fractions (= parameter for the separating quality) is huge, approx. 15…25°C and more.

A customer in South Korea, served by ILUDEST with a comprehensive range of ASTM-units of different standards and sizes over many years, had a request to go far beyond the capabilities of those ASTM-standards. Therefore, the team of ILUDEST developed, designed and produced a distillation plant characterised by an "unusual" combination of parameters. The unit produced by ILUDEST offered high separation efficiency (25…30 theoretical plates) even under vacuum condition, with low overlapping ranges (< 10°C), performing fractions up to 600°CAET (thus beyond ASTM D2892/D5236). ILUDEST successfully achieved an operation pressure atm…0.001 mmHg (thus the actual vacuum is about 100 times lower than requested by ASTM D5236) with high distillation rates even at very low vacuum, thus the common ASTM-distillation times are not exceeded. The unit can cope with large charges of up to 200 ltr, which do allow the production of well defined fractions for developing new products.

ILUDEST are renown for their capability to adapt to their customers’ needs. They are currently working on a fully automated online analyser acc. to ASTM D1160 and a fully automated product sampling system out of oil tanks acc. to ASTM D4057 (no draining of tanks or modifying tank internals are required for installing the device)