Experimental Analysis of Petroleum Wax Characteristics for Lubricant Oil Production in Solvent Dewaxing Unit

Measurements of wax-in-feedstock parameters are vital tools for successful simulation of the wax crystallization phenomena in the solvent dewaxing process. In this paper, comparisons are implemented between different methods to investigate the wax characteristics of SN500 feedstock before and after dewaxing. The measurements involved were the wax content, wax appearance temperature, wax disappearence temperature, solid mass yield of the wax removal. The measurement methods adopted in the analysis are the modified Universal Oil Production method 46-64, Differential Scanning Calorimetry thermal analyzer, Cross Polar Microscopy technique, and Gas Chromatography analysis. Results have demonstrated that the modified Universal Oil Production method is slightly under estimating the wax content in the feedstock compared to the DSC results. This under estimation becomes larger for the wax content in the base stock.