Quality control of products in petroleum refining

This chapter is concerned mostly with the laboratory testing for the control of petroleum products. It will be concerned with those tests that establish the quality of refinery streams and in some finished and saleable products. What is not covered are those specialized tests such as Mass Spectrometry, motor road tests and the like. Where possible sketches of test apparatus are included. Most of these tests are performed in the refinery laboratory, and generally follow the methods provided by the respective ASTM numbered tests.

The most common tests to check the quality of finished products cover the following:

• Specific gravity

• ASTM distillations

• Pensky Marten closed cup flash point

• Kinematic viscosities

• Octane numbers

• Sulfur content tests

• LPG weathering tests

• Reid vapor pressure

• Bromine number

The chapter begins with some details of typical product specifications. More discussion and description of modern day trends in product quality (such as the effect of Reformulated Gasoline) are given in Chapter 2 of this book.