Properties of Residual Petroleum Fuels

Although fuels derived from petroleum process residues have been used extensively for many years, considerable confusion still exists as to their characteristics. As essentially cheap by-product fuels, they have not received a great deal of attention in the past. In recent years their use in gas turbines and diesel engines has emphasized the need for a better understanding of their properties and behavior in combustion chambers. It is the aim of the present paper to bring together the published information on the nature of residual petroleum fuels, widely scattered in petroleum and engineering journals. It will be seen that these fuels generally exhibit a more complex behavior in comparison with heavy-distillate fuels.