Refineries consume large amounts of energy and water to refine crude oil into products. Up to 10% of crude oil’s energy content is consumed during processing, and it takes 1.5 bbl of water to process one barrel of crude oil. Refining processes also generate large quantities of excess thermal energy that needs to be expelled into the environment using a once-through or recirculating cooling system.
Hydrocarbon Processing, the downstream processing sector’s leading technical publication, has announced the finalists for its third annual awards.
Most refineries have some sort of mass balance and loss control program in place for accounting, planning and scheduling, as well as for financial and operational evaluation purposes.
Alfa Laval has introduced wide-opening design plates in its Packinox heat exchangers.
In a refinery or petrochemical plant, certain equipment can create “gray areas” between process engineers and instrument engineers.
The pumps referred to in this article are 2,600-HP vertical pumps utilized as booster pumps for the shipment of crude oil.
Within a refinery, four main utilities are considered essential to operations: electricity, natural gas, water and compressed air.
Steam ejector vacuum systems are generally considered to be reliable and require little maintenance.
Indorama Eleme Petrochemicals’ olefins plant in Port Harcourt, Nigeria is designed to produce 300,000 tpy of polymer-grade ethylene and 126,000 tpy of polymer-grade propylene through the pyrolysis or thermal cracking of natural gas liquids (NGL).