×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

Crude oil - polar or non-polar?

Crude oil - polar or non-polar?

Crude oil - polar or non-polar?

(OP)
Does anyone know if (in general) crude oil is s polar or non-polar liquid?  I'm trying to evaluate the potential (no pun intended) for crude oil to accumulate static charge as it enters a tank at high velocity and as particles drift down through it.

RE: Crude oil - polar or non-polar?

Water is polar - what happens when you mix oil and water?

I would say that crudes are non-polar. It may, however, contain some polar componds.

Best regards

Morteb

RE: Crude oil - polar or non-polar?

Is there not a velocity limit set in some standard or other? I seem to recall this from some years ago.
I think it also related to the method of entry into the tank and it was all associated with the potential for static electricity.
In any event documents such as this are pretty easy to discover with google:
http://www.soton.ac.uk/~wolfson/info_pdfs/guidanceforplantengineers-staticelectricity.pdf
Even Wikipedia has a useful comment on "electrostatics".

A useful article here:

http://molecular-engineering.blogspot.com/2007/07/static-electricity.html

JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
 

RE: Crude oil - polar or non-polar?

Crude is non-polar, however, it may contain some polar compounds, depending on your crude quality. Lighter ends will be partially soluble in water, salt, H2S and such will be polar. But the oil, itself, is non-polar

<<A good friend will bail you out of jail, but a true friend
will be sitting beside you saying " Damn that was fun!" - Unknown>>

RE: Crude oil - polar or non-polar?

Branan, Carl R, "Rules of Thumb for Chemical Engineers", p. 249, Gulf Publishing Company.  There are calcs and a nomagraph which will tell you if your fluid velocity is too high.  It's a reprint of an article from Adam Zanker for "Hydrocarbon Processing" (March 1976).

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources