Upgrading The Environmental Properties Of Kirkuk Kerosene Using Glacial Acetic Acid

Abstract

Glacial acetic acid was used to improve Kirkuk kerosene samples and decrease their aromatics contents. Two sets of experimental processes were performed: the first set included more process steps (mixing by orbital shaker, heating, centrifugation, and stabilization over many days). This set of experiments showed its maximum improvement when 1 mL of glacial acetic acid was added to 10 mL of Kirkuk kerosene sample to get a 42% improvement in the aniline point and a 12.5% improvement in the smoke point. The smoke point test values gave confusing results when the stabilization was increased to 4 days; the reason may be the chemical cracking of single-ring aromatic components into polyromantic components like naphthalene, which reduced the quality of the kerosene samples. The second set of experiments included only mixing and leaving the processed kerosene sample with 2 mL mixtures of glacial acetic acid and distilled water to set for 5 minutes. The greatest improvement was obtained when 1.8 mL of water containing 0.2 mL of glacial acetic acid was mixed with 10 mL of kerosene samples, resulting in a 19% improvement in aniline point and a 45% improvement in smoke point. The total sulfur percent and flashpoint tests revealed that the second set also had an acceptable chemical effect on kerosene samples by reducing 4.8% for the total sulfur test and increasing 11.7% for the flashpoint test. As a number, the first set of experiments showed better improvements in comparison with the second set, but to scale up these experiments and apply them industrially will be very difficult and expensive, and some steps are difficult to apply like centrifugation because of its high cost and because the stabilization step consumes a lot of time. Therefore, the second set of results will be more acceptable from an engineering point of view.