Patent Document ID: 9494536
Application ID: 14727395
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A method for predicting a corrosion rate of a crude oil derived sample, comprising: a. creating a corrosion prediction model, including the steps of: i. subjecting a plurality of samples to a range of x-ray energies; ii. collecting transmitted x-ray intensity or fluorescence signals from the plurality of samples; iii. transforming the collected transmitted x-ray intensity or fluorescence signals to x-ray absorption fine structure data for each sample in the form of absorbance versus x-ray energy; iv. identifying functional groups present in each of the plurality of samples from the x-ray absorption fine structure data; v. quantifying relative amounts of the functional groups identified in each of the plurality of samples; vi. determining a corrosion rate for each of the plurality of samples; and vii. correlating the corrosion rate for each of the plurality of samples with the relative amounts of each functional group identified in each of the plurality of samples to create the corrosion prediction model in the form of an equation of corrosion rate as a function of relative amounts of functional groups; b. subjecting the crude oil derived sample for which a corrosion rate prediction is desired to a range of x-ray energies to obtain x-ray absorption fine structure data in the form of absorbance versus x-ray energy; c. identifying functional groups present in the crude oil derived sample from the x-ray absorption fine structure data; d. quantifying relative amounts of the functional groups identified in the crude oil derived sample; and e. solving the corrosion prediction model for corrosion rate as a function of the relative amounts of the functional groups identified in the crude oil derived sample to obtain a prediction of the corrosion rate of the crude oil derived sample.