An Experimental Study of the Effect of Additives on the Pour Points of Diesel and Fuel Oil Produced by Isfehan Oil Refinery

One of the industrial problems is the phenomenon of wax precipitation of oil fractions. One of the ways to prevent wax precipitation is the use of chemical inhibitors to reduce the pour point. Studying the effect of additives on specific oil samples could help in solving the wax precipitation problems at various oil processing stages. Despite the studies that have been done, finding materials that can decrease the pour point and be economically acceptable from one view, and well optimized and acceptable from other chemical and environmental view is still an unsolved problem. So it’s important to use effective materials that can act on preventing wax precipitation,or on decreasing the amount of precipitate, thus as a result it can decrease the pour point temperature. In this study, the effect of industrial polymer additives and surfactants which are economically acceptable on the decrement of pour point temperature was studied using three oil products samples: light diesel, heavy diesel and the fuel oil, products of Esfahan Oil Refining Co. In this study, optimized type and concentration of additive was studied before additive was chosen. The results showed that the copolymer ethylene vinyl acetate 28% at a concentration of 500 ppm reduced the pour point temperature by 12°C for diesel, also the copolymer ethylene vinyl acetate 19% at a concentration of 300 ppm reduced the pour point temperature by 9°C for fuel oil. Also results of this study showed ethylene vinyl acetate copolymer can be used as the pour point depressant of diesel and fuel oil instead of kerosene and other refinery products.