Distillation of liquid fuels by thermogravimetry

In this paper, design and operation of a custom-built thermogravimetric apparatus for the distillation of liquid fuels are reported. Using a sensitive balance with scale of 0.001 g and ASTM distillation glassware, several petroleum and petroleum-derived samples have been analyzed by the thermogravimetric distillation method. When the ASTM distillation glassware is replaced by a micro-scale unit, sample size could be reduced from 100 g to 5-10 g. A computer program has been developed to transfer the data into a distillation plot, e.g. Weight Percent Distilled vs. Boiling Point. It also generates a report on the characteristic distillation parameters, such as, IBP (Initial Boiling Point), FBP (Final Boiling Point), and boiling point at 50 wt% distilled. Comparison of the boiling point distributions determined by TG (thermogravimetry) with those by SimDis GC (Simulated-Distillation Gas Chromatography) on two liquid fuel samples (i.e. a decanted oil and a filtered crude oil) are also discussed in this paper.