Patent ID: 8546146

Claim:
A process for evaluating a plurality of refinery feedstocks, said process comprising the steps of: (i) providing an array of refinery feedstocks, wherein said array comprises at least a plurality of different refinery feedstocks; (ii) fractionating each of said refinery feedstocks in said array in parallel to produce a further array comprising a plurality of fractions having different chemical and/or physical properties, each fraction being representative of a process stream that might be present in a refinery, wherein the fractionation step comprises treating each feedstock or a portion thereof using a microdistillation column or microfractionator to obtain fractions with defined boiling point ranges; and (iii) analysing each of said plurality of fractions to determine one or more chemical and/or physical properties of the fractions selected from density, specific gravity, total acid number, total base number, cold flow properties, viscosity, hydrocarbon speciation, sulphur content, sulphur compounds speciation, nitrogen content, nickel content, vanadium content, acid speciation, asphaltine content, carbon content, metal content, micro carbon residue, chloride, and combinations thereof, said analyses being performed at least partially in parallel.