Petroleum radiation processing This book is a summary of the research progress in the field of petroleum radiation processing giving rise to technology that offers the highest energy savings and lowest capital and operational expenses compared with any existing methods for oil refining. The theoretical part of this book sets out important problems in self sustaining cracking reactions in hydrocarbons. The next part provides a systematic description of the most important experiments on radiation cracking. The concluding part summarizes progress in the development of new radiation technologies for oil upgrading and deep processing Introduction. Radiation methods for petroleum processing have attracted the attention of researchers since the early 1960s when the discovery of the phenomenon of radiation thermal cracking presented an opportunity of using ionizing irradiation for high rate deep oil processing. New technologies for high viscous and heavy oil processing were developed with technical advances in the 1990s. These technologies are now ready to be scaled up for industrial applications. Radiation thermal cracking of oil feedstock represents a solution to overcoming many acute problems of the oil industry. However processes based on radiation thermal cracking require heightened temperatures that are usually about 40% lower than those characteristic for thermocatalytic cracking. This is acceptable for many refinery operations; however other applications such as oil upgrading near the sites of its extraction require radical reduction of the process temperature. Observation of radiation induced chain cracking reactions in hydrocarbons at lowered temperatures initiated the development of improved technological approaches combining the advantages of radiation thermal cracking and low temperature feedstock processing. Progress in radiation technologies for oil processing demanded more detailed elaboration of the theory of thermally and radiation induced self sustaining cracking reactions. Researchers still face serious difficulties in the practical application of the theory to experimental data interpretation