Abstract
The aim of this work is to study melioration in mesophase formation behaviour by deasphalting of petroleum residues. Pitches prepared from VRs have undesirable high values of physico-chemical properties as compared to their corresponding DAOs pitches. This is due to presence of high molecular weight asphaltenes molecules in VRs. The optical microscopic images of VR-390-1 and VR-390-2 pitches showed that they have small sized, distorted and agglomerated types of mesophase having mesophase contents (MC) 25 vol% and 22 vol% respectively but deasphalting of these VRs improve the growth and optical texture of mesophase in DAO-390-1 (29 vol%) and DAO-390-2 (35 vol%).