Gas chromatography and 2D-gas chromatography for petroleum industry

Detailed knowledge of petroleum products at molecular scale has always been essential to understand the mechanisms leading to their formation, to design thermodynamic and kinetic models employed in the refining processes and to predict their physical properties. In view of the complexity of petroleum products, very significant research efforts have been made over the past 15 years for improving relevant analytical techniques, especially in the field of Gas Chromatography in order to improve its separation power. The advent of comprehensive Two-dimensional Gas Chromatography (GC×GC) at the end of 1990’s constitutes a true revolution allowing an unprecedented insight into very complex mixture at the molecular level.
This book aims at providing a complete review of the implementation of Gas Chromatography in the field of oil industry, with an important focus on GC×GC and related multidimensional systems. It is therefore organised into 8 chapters dealing with fundamental and experimental aspects as well as data processing challenges. Recent progress in the development of these chromatographic systems are discussed according to various applications: detailed molecular analysis of hydrocarbons, speciation of hetero-element, global properties calculation based on chromatographic data and simulated distillation. Specialists from IFP Energies nouvelles, CNRS and major companies leading important research in this field have contributed, reporting a synthesis of the knowledge acquired from research these last 15 years.
Thus, this book will be useful for anyone involved in the separation of oil and derivatives: the student starting a research project, the academic researcher and the refinery engineer willing to deepen their knowledge on advanced multidimensional Gas Chromatography, as well as molecular analysis of petroleum products.

Contents :

1. Molecular analysis for petroleum products: challenges and future needs. 2. GCxGC: a disruptive technique. 3. Data processing applied to GCxGC. Applications to the petroleum industry. 4. Coupled systems with a GC or GCxGC dimension. 5. Detailed analysis of hydrocarbons. 6. Calculating properties from chromatographic data. 7. Speciation of heteroelements. 8. Simulated distillation. Index.