The vessel composition is important when considering vessel outflow because changes in composition change the density and potentially more importantly change the shape and location of the boundary of the two-phase envelope. The influence on the phase boundary can be significant on vessel outflow as the liquid phase density is typically two orders of magnitude larger than the gas phase density for pressures and temperatures remote from the thermodynamic critical point. In this article two issues are addressed, outflow sensitivity to composition of hydrocarbon systems with a large component of methane, and outflow from systems where a petroleum fraction representation of composition is used. It is shown that approximating multi-component systems with a large methane content by methane can result in significant discrepancies in the predicted mass flow rate and vessel pressure. When a vessels composition is characterised by petroleum fractions, and the Kesler-Lee equations are used to predict thermodynamic properties, the predicted outflow is almost comparable to the predicted outflow calculated using a mole fraction representation of composition. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.