Crude oil - polar or non-polar?

[IFRs]

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.

 

[MortenA]

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

 

[jmw]

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

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[Unotec]

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
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[gkennedy34]

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).