Changing Crudes, New Analysis Methods

Increasing global demand for petroleum products coupled with decreasing availability of light, sweet crude oils is changing the requirements for refinery laboratory analysis of incoming raw materials and outgoing products. As the economics of cheaper heavy crudes become more attractive, especially for complex refineries, laboratories must adjust to analysing newly challenging mixtures of varying crude composition to aid refinery process control and continually maintain strict quality standards for light and heavy fuels and other products.

Flexible laboratory techniques such as Thermo Scientific wavelength dispersive X-ray fluorescence (WDXRF) systems adapt easily to crude oil sample composition changes. Crude oil of any consistency can be quickly and accurately checked for not only sulphur content but also contaminant metals such as vanadium (V), iron (Fe) and nickel (Ni); no calibration standards are necessary using industry-leading analysis program UniQuant® 5 for unknown samples.

XRF analysis is equally adaptable to meeting changing needs in product quality control caused by variable raw materials. In addition to being the preferred lab technique for ultra-low sulphur (S) compliance testing in gasoline and diesel fuels, powerful instruments such as the ARL ADVANT’X Series also detect trace parts-per-million of corrosion-inducing contaminants such as chlorine and catalyst fines in petroleum products, as well as wear metals in oils. Contact us to discuss a full range of XRF analytical solutions for today’s changing petroleum industry needs through www.thermo.com/xpetro.