The applicability of radiotracers for the investigation of the distillation of hydrocarbons

The use of radioactive tracers provide valuable methods for the investigation of distillation processes and have been applied to determine the characteristics of material streams, the dynamics of flowing phases and the compositions in various parts of the distillation equipment. A method is proposed for testing individual radiotracers employed for the investigation of the distillation of hydrocarbons. The method consists in laboratory-scale distillation of a tracer together with a multicomponent hydrocarbon mixture, namely a gasoline fraction. The purification efficiency, distillation characteristics, and effective radiochemical purity of several tracers (reactor activated bromobenzene and synthesized C₃H₇ ⁸²Br, C₄H₉ ⁸²Br, C₅H₁₁ ⁸²Br) have been investigated. The distillation characteristics of bromohydrocarbons labelled with⁸²Br and selected hydrocarbons tagged with¹⁴C (benzene and cumene) have been compared. The radiotracers investigated were employed for the determination of the hydrodynamic parameters of hydrocarbon distillation in laboratory packed columns and a commercial distillation tower.