Book Description

The last three chapters of this book deal with application of methods presented in previous chapters to estimate various thermodynamic, physical, and transport properties of petroleum fractions. In this chapter, various methods for prediction of physical and thermodynamic properties of pure hydrocarbons and their mixtures, petroleum fractions, crude oils, natural gases, and reservoir fluids are presented. As it was discussed in Chapters 5 and 6, properties of gases may be estimated more accurately than properties of liquids. Theoretical methods of Chapters 5 and 6 for estimation of thermophysical properties generally can be applied to both liquids and gases; however, more accurate properties can be predicted through empirical correlations particularly developed for liquids. When these correlations are developed with some theoretical basis, they are more accurate and have wider range of applications. In this chapter some of these semitheoretical correlations are presented. Methods presented in Chapters 5 and 6 can be used to estimate properties such as density, enthalpy, heat capacity, heat of vaporization, and vapor pressure. Characterization methods of Chapters 2-4 are used to determine the input parameters needed for various predictive methods. One important part of this chapter is prediction of vapor pressure that is needed for vapor-liquid equilibrium calculations of Chapter 9.