Comparative analysis of quartz sand and detritus effects on thermal behavior and kinetics of heavy crude oil

This work aimed at conducting the comparative effect analysis of quartz sand and detritus on thermal behavior and kinetics of heavy crude oil by thermogravimetric (TG) tests with multiple heating rates. The results indicated that during the whole heating process, oil, oil + quartz sand and oil + detritus experienced three main regions, i.e. low temperature oxidation (LTO), fuel deposition (FD) and high temperature oxidation (HTO). When the detritus and quartz sand were added, the FD range was shortened and HTO region was shifted to a lower temperature one, especially for the detritus. Generally, the detritus played a positive role of catalytic effect and surface area effect for oil oxidation in different reaction regions. The relation of activation energy versus conversion rate for oil alone and its mixtures was presented, which is expected to add new insights to oxidation mechanism and catalytic mechanism. Compared with oil only and oil + quartz sand, oil + detritus gave the lowest activation energies which were varied between 32-81, 63-161 and 63-133 kJ/mol at the LTO, FD and HTO stages, respectively.