The supercritical fluid extractive fractionation and the characterization of heavy oils and petroleum residua1

In the history of the evolution of the petroleum science and technology, the use of the true boiling point (TBP) distillation to establish the property–yield curve and the use of Universal Oil Products (UOP) K factor as a criterion of classification and correlation of properties of petroleum products was accepted as a common practice. However due to the limitations of the TBP and the UOP factor, they have difficulties when applied to the characterization of heavy petroleum and petroleum residua, hence a new method based on the supercritical fluid extraction and fractionation (SFEF) and a new characterization factor, UPC KH was proposed in this laboratory and had shown some success.