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NIR spectroscopy in the petrochemical and refinery industry: The ASTM compliant tool for QC and product screening – Part 1

Aug 30, 2021

Article

This article is Part 1 of a series.

Introduction to the petrochemical and refining industry

Oil and gas for fuel are produced in nearly every corner of the globe, from small private wells generating around 100 barrels a day, to the large bore wells producing upwards of 40 times that volume. Despite this great variation in size, many parts of the refining process are quite similar.

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Figure 1. Illustration of a fractionating distillation column used for the purposes of refining crude oil into several desirable end products.

Chemicals derived from petroleum or natural gas, so-called «petrochemicals», are an essential part of the contemporary chemical industry. The field of petrochemistry became increasingly popular around the early 1940’s during the second world war. At that time there was a growing demand for synthetic products which was a great driving force for the development of petrochemical products.

Oil refining aims to provide a defined range of products according to agreed specifications. Simple refineries use a distillation column (Figure 1) to separate crude oil into different fractions based on their chemical properties, and the relative quantities are directly dependent on the crude oil used. Therefore, it is necessary to obtain a range of crudes that can be blended into a suitable feedstock to produce the required quantity and quality of end products.

The basic products from fractional distillation are shown in Figure 1.

Near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy is a technique that is particularly suited for making quality control of these end products more efficient and cost-effective for manufacturers. Furthermore, NIRS is recognized and accepted by ASTM as an alternative method to other techniques. Dedicated ASTM methods for method development, method validation, and results validation are presented later in this article.

Read on for a short overview on NIR spectroscopy followed by application examples for the petrochemical and refinery industry to learn how petrochemical producers and refineries alike can benefit from NIRS.