DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION This invention is a process of controlling the value of at least one characteristic in a blended composition resulting from the blending of various stock components.
Although many types of components may be blended to form a wide variety of products, in the typical case, the components are petroleum refinery streams which are blended to form a petroleum product.
For example, the blended product may be, but is not limited to, gasoline, jet fuel, diesel fuel, lubricating oils, and others.
The characteristics for which the blending is controlled may be one or more of a number of characteristics such as, but not limited to, octane number, cetane number, RVP, specific gravity, and viscosity, and percentage content of benzene, aromatics, ethers, alcohols, and others.
Furthermore, additional considerations or economic weightings other than quality parameters, physical properties or compositional characteristics could also be controlled.
Material costs and blending component availability, for example, could be included.
Which characteristics are controlled generally depends on the desired petroleum product.
For example, if the product is gasoline, the characteristics controlled may include octane number and RVP; if the product is diesel fuel, the characteristic controlled for may be cetane number; and, if the product is lubricating oil, the characteristics controlled may include viscosity.
In general terms, the apparatus necessary to perform the present invention in a typical case includes feed lines, having flow sensors and flow controllers connected to a computer, which provide the components to a mixing chamber, a product line which conducts the blended product away from the mixing chamber, and a means for analyzing the product which is also connected to the computer.
Also in general terms, the invention is performed by first setting the proportion of the components to previously selected values and then determining the initial values, V.
sub.
l, of one or more characteristics of the product
|
Control Computers 
