Determination of liquid and solid phase composition in partially frozen middle distillate fuels

✍ Scribed by Thomas L. Van Winkle; Wilbur A. Affens; Erna J. Beal; George W. Mushrush; Robert N. Hazlett; John DeGuzman

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1987
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 901 KB
• Volume: 66
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0016-2361
• DOI: 10.1016/0016-2361(87)90326-7

✦ Synopsis

A liquid-solid separator apparatus was constructed and a method developed for the separation and characterization (g.c.-m.s.) of the crystals and liquid from partially frozen middle distillate fuels. The filtrate data were straightforward, but the precipitate presented problems in interpretation since the waxy crystals entrapped significant amounts of liquid. Since it was not possible to remove all of the entrapped liquid from the precipitate, an indirect method was derived to determine the composition of the liquid-free crystalline material. This required that the fraction of entrapped liquid in the precipitate be known, which could be determined from the g.c. data. Tracer materials in the original fuel were selected which did not crystallize out at the temperatures under study and therefore showed no appreciable concentration change with temperature. These tracer materials were used to estimate the fraction of entrapped liquid in the precipitate. Results obtained by this technique were tested and confirmed by h.p.1.c.