Abstract
Thermal cracking of heavy oil residues has gained the attention of oil refineries due to the increasing need for light oil fractions, as well as its lower value compared to light oil fractions. In this paper, the thermal cracking process of the residual crude oil that product from atmospheric distillation towers in the Samawah Refinery was studied in order to convert the heavy oil into a lighter oil. API gravity and conversion ratio for the result from the cracking process has been adopted as indicators of the accuracy and efficiency of the thermal cracking process for AR (atmospheric residue), where the API gravity for AR is equal to 15.5 .The response surface methodology (RSM) was adopted in the design of experiments to reach the best variables of operational conditions , which were in a range of temperatures (350-450 degrees Celsius) and time (30-60 minutes), through which we obtain the best results for the conversion ratio and API gravity for the liquid resulting from the thermal cracking process of AR, where the conversion ratio was 53.4% and API gravity equals 34.4 with a time of 45 minutes and temperature 386 0C.
