Meliorate optical textures and mesophase contents by promising approach of deasphalting of petroleum residues

The aim of this work is to study melioration in mesophase formation behaviour by deasphalting of petroleum residues. Pitches prepared from VRs have undesirable high values of physico-chemical properties as compared to their corresponding DAOs pitches. This is due to presence of high molecular weight asphaltenes molecules in VRs. The optical microscopic images of VR-390-1 and VR-390-2 pitches showed that they have small sized, distorted and agglomerated types of mesophase having mesophase contents (MC) 25 vol% and 22 vol% respectively but deasphalting of these VRs improve the growth and optical texture of mesophase in DAO-390-1 (29 vol%) and DAO-390-2 (35 vol%).