Modeling of Hydrocarbon Droplets Dissolution in Near-Critical and Supercritical Water based on GCA-EoS Fugacity Predictions

P. HE; F. A. SANCHEZ; S. PEREDA; A.F. GHONIEM

Porto

Conferencia; 14th International Conference on Properties and Phase Equilibria for Product and Process Design (PPEPPD 2016); 2016

Universidad de Porto

Upgrading heavy crude oil using near-critical or supercritical water (NCW/SCW) shows advantages such as high yielding of light oils, removal of sulfur content and heavy metals, etc. We study the thermodynamic and mixing process of crude oil and NCW/SCW using representative hydrocarbons, like benzene and 1-decylnaphthalene. GCA-EoS, the first equation of state that takes into account association using a SAFT-like group contribution term, is used to predict the thermodynamic properties and phase equilibrium compositions. The generalized Maxwell-Stefan equations are solved to model the multicomponent mass transfer with the driving force expressed in terms of fugacity gradients to account for effects of non-ideality on mass fluxes. The mixing of a hydrocarbon droplet in the bulk of supercritical water is studied numerically at different mixing conditions in a 1-D spherical symmetric geometry. We demonstrate here that the GCA model can play an important role in the design of supercritical fluids reactors.