Method of characterizing feeds to catalytic cracking process units

A method to determine the concentration of compositional lumps in one or more boiling fractions selected from the group consisting of naphtha, distillate, vacuum gas oil, and vacuum residue, in a feed to or product from a hydrocarbon conversion process, hydrocarbon separation process and/or hydrocarbon blending process comprising:

• (A) measuring the IR spectrum of said feed or product,
• (B) applying a multivariate correlation to the spectrum to determine the concentration of
• (a) naphtha boiling range fraction lumps consisting of paraffins, cyclic olefins, noncyclic olefins, 1-ring naphthenes, 2-ring naphthenes, 1-ring alkyl aromatics, and 1-ring naphthenoaromatics, and/or
• (b) distillate boiling fraction lumps consisting of paraffins, 1-ring naphthenes, 2-ring naphthenes, 1-ring alkyl aromatics, 1-ring naphthenoarornatics, 2-ring alkyl aromatics, 2-ring naphthenoaromatics, and 2-ring denuded aromatics, and/or
• (c) one or more of vacuum gas oil and/or vacuum residue fraction lumps selected from the group consisting of
• (i) paraffins, 1-ring naphthenes, 2-ring naphthenes, 1-ring alkyl aromatics, 1-ring naphthenoaromatics, 2-ring alkyl aromatics, 2-ring naphthenoaromatics, 3-ring alkyl aromatics, 3-ring naphthenoaromatics, 3-ring denuded aromatics, 4+ring alkyl aromatics, 4-ring naphthenoaromatics, and 4+ring denuded aromatics;
• (ii) saturates, total 1-ring aromatics, total 2-ring aromatics, total 3-ring aromatics, total 4 ring aromatics and total polars;
• (iii) saturates, total 1-ring aromatics, 1-ring aromatic cores, total 2-ring aromatics, 2-ring aromatic cores, total 3-ring aromatics, 3-ring aromatic cores, total 4+ring aromatics, 4+ring aromatic cores, total polars, and polar aromatic cores, and combination thereof.