2.

0 SUMMARY

The objectives of this experiment is to determine the vapour pressure of petroleum

products and to compare the Reid vapour pressure of different petroleum products. Basically,
there are three types of oils that we used to differentiate the vapour pressure which is kerosene,
petrol and lubricating oil. Meanwhile, the apparatus that was used to determine the Reid vapour
pressure was ASTM D323. The apparatus consist of two chambers which are the vapour
chamber (upper section) and liquid chamber (lower section), pressure gauge and water bath.
Each of the oil were poured into 3 different liquid chamber. When the water bath reached
37.8˚C, the vapour pressure apparatus will be placed in the water bath. When the reading is
stable or about 5 minutes, then we can take the pressure reading. This step is performed for 3
times until 15 minutes to achieve the average pressure. Reid Vapour Pressure is the method to
test the measurement and volatility of crude oil and other petroleum products. RVP is stated in
kilopascal. Volatility is the property of a liquid fuel that defines its evaporation characteristics
where the volatility must be high enough to avoid vapor lock, vaporization loses, air pollution
and unsafe storage and handling. The average of RVP for diesel, kerosene and petrol are 3.63
kPa, 5.1 kPa and 27.23 kPa, respectively. Petrol has the highest RVP among these three
petroleum products, followed by kerosene and petrol, where diesel has the lowest RVP. Petrol
is a high volatile petroleum product that can vaporize easily. Thus explained why it has the
highest vapour pressure.(Pandey et al., 2004). But, petrol has a lower viscosity. The lower the
viscosity, the higher the RVP. As a conclusion, the actual value obtained were different with
expected RVP value from the theory. It is because sometime the temperature is not well
maintained and the equipment has been used many time thus the efficiency of the equipment
has been decreased. Hence, does not producing an accurate result.