Stability of fuel oils produced by visbreaking of vacuum residue

Abstract Attempts have been made to improve the properties of short residue (550 °C + ) for producing fuel oil meeting the commercial requirements. Visbreaking process was applied at conditions similar to those used at the refineries. The visbroken products obtained were evaluated and their stability studied. The results obtained confirm that the products are considered as fuel oils needing a lower amount of cutter stock than the standard quantity. Furthermore, a correlation has been found between the behaviour of visbroken products and visbreaking temperatures.