Crude Oil Composition

What is Petroleum
 Petroleum (Crude Oil)
• Petroleum (crude oil) is a natural yellow to black,
thick, flammable liquid hydrocarbon mixture up to 70
carbon atoms along with hydrocarbon derivatives and
metallic compounds found principally beneath the
surface of earth
 Atomic Composition
• A complex mixture containing thousands
of different organic hydrocarbon molecules
– 83-87% Carbon
– 11-15% Hydrogen
– 1-6% Sulfur
– Nitrogen 0-1 wt%
– Metals 0-0.1 wt%
 Crude oil formation
• Sometimes called petroleum is found in the Earth's
crust.
• Millions of years ago small animals and plants died
and fell to the bottom of the sea.
• Their remains were covered by mud

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• The mud eventually turned to rock.
• This rock put a lot of pressure
on the dead animals and plants.
• Rocks around them also
heated them up

•Together the heat and the

pressure turned the remains
into crude oil.
•It was important that
no air or oxygen was present.
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• The crude oil was often mixed with sea water. Oil
moves upwards and floats on water.
• Some of the rock above the oil let the oil move up
through it too.
• This rock has spaces between its particles and is
called permeable or porous.
• Other rocks above the oil were impermeable (not
porous).
• The oil could not float upwards through these rocks
and so it gets trapped underneath it.
• Geologists - rock scientists - can often tell where oil
may be trapped.
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 Conventional crude oil reservoirs
• When hydrocarbons are accumulated in a
such a trap, an oil reservoir forms from which
the oil can be extracted by drilling and
pumping

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• Materials like crude oil and coal which formed
from living things many years ago are called
fossil fuels. Crude oil takes millions of years to
form, so when we have used it all, we cannot
quickly get more.
• This is why we call crude oil a non-renewable
or finite resource.

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 Drilling stages
• Before a drill touches the earth, a variety of advanced technologies are used
to pinpoint – with a high degree of certainty – exactly where that drill should
go.
• The actual process of finding hydrocarbons consists of three phases.
• The exploration phase involves drilling wells to evaluate whether a reservoir
has sufficient hydrocarbons to make development economically viable.
• In the second phase, additional wells (appraisal wells) are drilled in smaller,
more contained areas to appraise the reservoir and try to confirm the
assumption that hydrocarbons can be extracted economically.
• If the appraisal program indicates the project is viable, it moves to the third
phase – production. This would entail a much higher level of drilling activity,
and production from these wells could last for several decades.
Exploration
Exploration
Oil and gas production
 Hydraulic Fracturing (Fraking)
• Hydraulic fracturing produces fractures in the rock formation that stimulate the
flow of natural gas or oil, increasing the volumes that can be recovered. Wells
may be drilled vertically hundreds to thousands of feet below the land surface
and may include horizontal or directional sections extending thousands of feet.
• Fractures are created by pumping large quantities of fluids at high pressure
down a wellbore and into the target rock formation. Hydraulic fracturing fluid
open and enlarge fractures within the rock formation. These fractures can
extend several hundred feet away from the wellbore.
• Over 98%of fracking fluid is water, with quartz sand and chemical additives
making up the rest. The chemicals in the mixture include viscosity-increasing
agents to better hold the solid particles of sand in solution, foaming chemicals to
aid transportation of sand particles, and acids to aid erosion. The sand particles
hold open fissures to increase the amount of gas that can escape once the fluid
has been injected.
Hydraulic Fracturing (Fraking)
Crude oil transportation

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 Crude Oil Composition

The principal compounds of crude oil

Hydrocarbon compounds
A. Paraffins
B. Isoparaffins and branched paraffins
C. Olefins
D. Naphthenes
E. Aromatics

Non Hydrocarbon compounds

F. Oxygen
G. Sulfur
H. Nitrogen
I. Metals
 Hydrocarbon compounds
A. Paraffins

Normal or straight chain compounds

All normal hydrocarbons from C1 to C33
The simplest paraffin molecule is methane
 B. Isoparaffins and branched paraffins
Isoparaffins are those with methyl on number 2 carbon
atom. When carbon atoms is greater than 3, several
hydrocarbons with different structure and different
properties may exist.
Branched paraffins have the alkyl group further down
the carbon chain

iso

Branched
 C. Olefins

They are similar to paraffins at least 2 of the carbon atoms are

double bonded
Do not usually occur in crude oils but are formed during
processing
Undesirable in the finished products because they are reactive and
easily oxidized and polymerized to form gum and varnishes
In gasoline boiling range some olifins are desirable because they
have higher octane number than paraffins with the same carbon
number
 C. Olefins

Diolefins containing 2 double bonds

Undesirable because they react rapidly with
olefins to form polymers that plug filters and
equipment
 D. Cycloparaffins (Naphthenes)

– Saturated cyclic hydrocarbons with mainly methyl

groups (cyclo hexane)

Alkylcyclopentanes Alkylcyclohexanes

Methylcyclopentane Methylcyclohexane
 D. Cycloparaffins (Naphthenes)

• Bicycloparaffins are compounds of 2 or more

saturated rings with 2 carbons in common
 E. Aromatics

Mononuclear aromatics are those molecules with at

least one stable benzene ring
Binuclear 2 aromatics with benzene rings

Alkylbenzene

Aromatic cycloparaffin

Flourenes
 E. Aromatics

Polynuclear aromatics with more than 2 benzene rings

Binuclear aromatics
Trinuclear aromatics
Tetranuclear aromatics
 Group Chemical Analysis
• There are chemical analysis that show the
relative concentrations of major hydrocarbon
groups
• Common fractionation methods (GC) to
express composition are:
– PNA (Paraffins, Naphthenes, Aromatics)
– PONA (Paraffins, Olefins, Naphthenes, Aromatics)
– PIONA (Paraffins, Isoparaffins, Olefins,
Naphthenes, Aromatics)
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 Non hydrocarbon compounds

• Sulfur compounds
– Complex and thermally unstable
– They break down during refinery processing to
hydrogen sulfide and simple organic sulfur
compounds
– Corrosive because they are acidic
– Sulfur content is expressed as wt % and it varies from
less than 0.1% and 5%
– Crude oil with greater than 0.5% sulfur needs more
extensive processing and it is called “sour” crude
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 Nitrogen compounds

– Usually Less than 0.1wt% but more than 0.25 wt%

requires special processing
– Cause severe poisoning to catalyst
– Are quite thermally stable so traces of theses
compounds in light refinery streams

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Basic Nitrogen Compounds

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Non basic Nitrogen Compounds
 Oxygen compounds
– Usually available as acidic type such as carboxylic
acids or non acidic type as esters

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 Metallic compounds

– Available in ppms that ranges from few ppms to

1000 ppm
– Such as Nickel, vanadium and copper
– Can severly affect the catalyst activities
– Usually in high boiling point product such as fuel
oil
– Vanadium above 2 ppm in fuel oil can lead to
severe corrosion

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