Turbiscan Heavy Fuel measures fuel oil stability

The French company Formulaction, specialising in the development and sales of instruments for analysis of concentrated dispersions, is launching a new instrument, Turbiscan Heavy Fuel

The French company Formulaction, specializing in the development and sales of instruments for analysis of concentrated dispersions, is launching a new instrument, Turbiscan Heavy Fuel.

The device was designed in collaboration with Associated Octel (UK), a company manufacturing additives.

The instrument complies with the ASTM D7061-04 for measuring heavy fuel oil stability.

Over recent years several methods have been developed, but these analyses remain time-consuming, subjective and tedious.

"Turbiscan Heavy Fuel" is the first instrument providing an objective, repeatable and accurate measurement of asphaltene stability in heavy fuel oils.

The process can be performed in only 15 minutes.

Reduction in the quality of crude oil throughout the world, due to diminishing resources and increasing refinery efficiency, have led to a deterioration in heavy fuel oil quality.

Asphaltenes - a mixture of heavy hydrocarbons - tend to precipitate depending on the nature of solvents in which they are contained.

The result is blocked pipework, clogged filters or plugged burners.

Extraction sites, refineries and heavy fuel oil users (marine companies and electrical power plants) are therefore obligated to systematically test the heavy fuel oil stability in order to improve efficiency of their processes.

The ASTM compliant "Turbiscan Heavy Fuel" device enables measurement of heavy fuel oil stability in 15 minutes.

This parameter quantifies the capacity of asphaltenes to precipitate and settle within a fuel oil.

It allows the accurate optimisation of the concentration of additives to be added to optimise the stability of the fuel.

The technology can also have other applications within the petroleum field, such as de-emulsification of water-in-oil emulsions during extraction processes, stability of drilling fluids or any other applications in which the stability or destabilisation of dispersed systems need to be monitored.

The Turbiscan range of devices combine the multiple light scattering measurement to a vertical scanning of the product analysed.

This scanning enables the identification and quantification of localised destabilisation phenomena (creaming, sedimentation, clarification, etc).

Furthermore, the measurement is sensitive to variations in size, allowing associated instabilities to be identified (coalescence, aggregation, flocculation, etc).

Find the Formulaction Company at the IASH 2005 International Conference in Sitges, Spain, from 18th to 22nd September 2005.

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