The pyrolysis characteristics of petroleum sludge samples collected from crude oil tank and cleaning water reservoir under two slow heating rates (5℃·min-1 and 2℃·min-1) were experimentally studied in a fixed bed reactor. Thermogravimetric analysis was carried out for deducing reaction kinetics based on Doyle equation. Results show that around 65% of oil can be recovered through pyrolysis and the fraction of cyclic compounds increased with heating rate caused by enhanced C-H bonds breaking and cyclization reactions. Moreover

the apparent activation energy grows 20%-37% with higher heating rate.