Welcome

Greetings! You have reached the website of Soluble Solutions. Soluble Solutions is the consulting business of Irwin (Dr. Irv) Wiehe, centered on solving fouling problems in petroleum refining and on improving the conversion of heavy oils and petroleum resids. In addition to consulting, Soluble Solutions offers training, oil compatibility testing, and a book, authored by Dr. Irv. By going on to the other pages on this website, you will learn much from Dr. Irv’s insight on how to solve refinery fouling problems and how to improve heavy oil conversion – much more technical information than is typical for a website of a consulting company. Of course, even more is available in Dr. Irv’s book and offered by one of his custom training courses.

Services

Pointing your mouse to Services above, you will find the services include Crude Oil Compatibility Testing, Refinery Fouling Mitigation, Resid Conversion, and Training. Clicking on each service will provide you with descriptions of each in some technical detail but summarized here.

Crude Oil Compatibility Testing

Nearly all organic fouling by crude oils is caused by insoluble asphaltenes, usually resulting from the blending of crude oils. Dr. Irv has devised tests for individual crude oils that one may use to predict conservatively which oils are safe to blend in all proportions without precipitating asphaltenes and which pairs of oils should not be blended. Many refineries and petroleum companies send Soluble Solutions crude oil samples before decisions are made about purchasing and scheduling the crude oils. If your refinery does not test for crude oil compatibility, you might read this section and consider using this unique service of Soluble Solutions that will enable preventing crude oil fouling before it happens.

Refinery Fouling Mitigation

Dr. Irv has devised a systematic procedure to determine quickly the cause of refinery fouling and coking problems and to arrive at multiple solutions from which the refinery may select. This takes advantage of Dr. Irv’s knowledge of fouling chemistry, rather than depending solely on engineering solutions or the use of chemical additives. Read this section and you will learn how Dr. Irv quickly identifies the cause and the range of solutions. What more details? Read Dr. Irv’s book, schedule him to present a training course, or contract Dr. Irv as a consultant.

Resid Conversion

The petroleum refining industry has greatly neglected developing new resid conversion processes over the last 40 years. However, Dr. Irv’s research shows that resid conversion can greatly be improved and provides the direction for improvement. This section provides a tutorial where you may learn much about this topic. Of course, Dr. Irv’s book and a training course would be even better.

Training

Dr. Irv will custom design a one to three day training course for you in fouling mitigation and/or resid conversion. This section includes a table of contents of a course that he has taught recently.

About

This section provides the history of Soluble Solutions and a bio of Dr. Irv.

Book

Clicking on this tab will lead you to a flyer on Dr. Irv’s Book, Process Chemistry of Petroleum Macromolecules. Click on the subheading, Purchase, will provide you with the code to get a 20% discount and take you to the CRC website for ordering.

News and Conferences

In this section Dr. Irv will try to keep everyone up to date on future Conferences where you can hear him speak and/or meet him. In addition, he will alert you on changes in the services offered by Soluble Solutions.