Oil Refinery

Oil refinery or petroleum refinery is an industrial process plant where crude oil is transformed
and refined into more useful products such as petroleum naphtha, gasoline, diesel fuel, asphalt
base, heating oil, kerosene, liquefied petroleum gas, jet fueland fuel oils. Petrochemicals feed
stock like ethylene and propylene can also be produced directly by cracking crude oil without the
need of using refined products of crude oil such as naphtha.

Oil refineries are typically large, sprawling industrial complexes with extensive piping running
throughout, carrying streams of fluids between large chemical processing units, such
as distillation columns. In many ways, oil refineries use much of the technology of, and can be
thought of, as types of chemical plants.

The crude oil feedstock has typically been processed by an oil production plant. There is usually
an oil depot at or near an oil refinery for the storage of incoming crude oil feedstock as well as
bulk liquid products.

Petroleum refineries are very large industrial complexes that involve many different processing
units and auxiliary facilities such as utility units and storage tanks. Each refinery has its own
unique arrangement and combination of refining processes largely determined by the refinery
location, desired products and economic considerations.

An oil refinery is considered an essential part of the downstream side of the petroleum industry.

Some modern petroleum refineries process as much as 800,000 to 900,000 barrels (127,000 to
143,000 cubic meters) of crude oil per day.

According to the Oil and Gas Journal in the world a total of 636 refineries were operated on the
31 December 2014 for a total capacity of 87.75 million barrels (13,951,000 m3).

Jamnagar Refinery is the largest oil refinery, since 25 December 2008, with a processing
capacity of 1.24 million barrels (197,000 m3). Located in Gujarat, India, it is owned by Reliance
Industries.
Operation
Raw or unprocessed crude oil is not generally useful in industrial applications, although "light,
sweet" (low viscosity, low sulfur) crude oil has been used directly as a burner fuel to produce
steam for the propulsion of seagoing vessels. The lighter elements, however, form explosive
vapors in the fuel tanks and are therefore hazardous, especially in warships. Instead, the
hundreds of different hydrocarbon molecules in crude oil are separated in a refinery into
components which can be used as fuels, lubricants, and as feedstocks in petrochemical processes
that manufacture such products as plastics, detergents, solvents, elastomers and fibers such
as nylon and polyesters.

Petroleum fossil fuels are burned in internal combustion engines to provide power
for ships, automobiles, aircraft engines, lawn mowers, dirt bikes, and other machines.
Different boiling points allow the hydrocarbons to be separated by distillation. Since the lighter
liquid products are in great demand for use in internal combustion engines, a modern refinery
will convert heavy hydrocarbons and lighter gaseous elements into these higher value products.

Oil can be used in a variety of ways because it contains hydrocarbons of varying molecular
masses, forms and lengths such
as paraffins, aromatics, naphthenes (or cycloalkanes), alkenes, dienes, and alkynes. While the
molecules in crude oil include different atoms such as sulfur and nitrogen, the hydrocarbons are
the most common form of molecules, which are molecules of varying lengths and complexity
made of hydrogen and carbon atoms, and a small number of oxygen atoms. The differences in
the structure of these molecules account for their varying physical and chemical properties, and it
is this variety that makes crude oil useful in a broad range of several applications.

Once separated and purified of any contaminants and impurities, the fuel or lubricant can be sold
without further processing. Smaller molecules such as isobutane and propylene or butylenes can
be recombined to meet specific octane requirements by processes such as alkylation, or more
commonly, dimerization. The octane grade of gasoline can also be improved by catalytic
reforming, which involves removing hydrogen from hydrocarbons producing compounds with
higher octane ratings such as aromatics. Intermediate products such as gasoils can even be
reprocessed to break a heavy, long-chained oil into a lighter short-chained one, by various forms
of cracking such as fluid catalytic cracking, thermal cracking, and hydrocracking. The final step
in gasoline production is the blending of fuels with different octane ratings, vapor pressures, and
other properties to meet product specifications. Another method for reprocessing and upgrading
these intermediate products (residual oils) uses a devolatilization[permanent dead link] process to
separate usable oil from the waste asphaltene material.Oil refineries are large scale plants,
processing about a hundred thousand to several hundred thousand barrels of crude oil a day.
Because of the high capacity, many of the units operate continuously, as opposed to processing
in batches, at steady state or nearly steady state for months to years. The high capacity also
makes process optimization and advanced process control very desirable.
The Crude il distillation unit
The crude oil distillation unit (CDU) is the first processing unit in virtually all petroleum
refineries. The CDU distills the incoming crude oil into various fractions of different boiling
ranges, each of which are then processed further in the other refinery processing units. The CDU
is often referred to as the atmospheric distillation unit because it operates at slightly above
atmospheric pressure.[1][2][11]
Below is a schematic flow diagram of a typical crude oil distillation unit. The incoming crude oil
is preheated by exchanging heat with some of the hot, distilled fractions and other streams. It is
then desalted to remove inorganic salts (primarily sodium chloride).
Following the desalter, the crude oil is further heated by exchanging heat with some of the hot,
distilled fractions and other streams. It is then heated in a fuel-fired furnace (fired heater) to a
temperature of about 398 °C and routed into the bottom of the distillation unit.
The cooling and condensing of the distillation tower overhead is provided partially by
exchanging heat with the incoming crude oil and partially by either an air-cooled or water-cooled
condenser. Additional heat is removed from the distillation column by a pumparound system as
shown in the diagram below.
As shown in the flow diagram, the overhead distillate fraction from the distillation column is
naphtha. The fractions removed from the side of the distillation column at various points
between the column top and bottom are called sidecuts. Each of the sidecuts (i.e., the kerosene,
light gas oil and heavy gas oil) is cooled by exchanging heat with the incoming crude oil. All of
the fractions (i.e., the overhead naphtha, the sidecuts and the bottom residue) are sent to
intermediate storage tanks before being processed further.

Flow diagram of a typical petroleum refinery

The image below is a schematic flow diagram of a typical petroleum refinery that depicts the
various refining processes and the flow of intermediate product streams that occurs between the
inlet crude oil feedstock and the final end-products.
The diagram depicts only one of the literally hundreds of different oil refinery configurations.
The diagram also does not include any of the usual refinery facilities providing utilities such as
steam, cooling water, and electric power as well as storage tanks for crude oil feedstock and for
intermediate products and end products
Corrosion
Corrosion of metallic components is a major factor of inefficiency in the refining process. Because it
leads to equipment failure, it is a primary driver for the refinery maintenance schedule. Corrosion-
related direct costs in the U.S. petroleum industry as of 1996 were estimated at US $3.7 billion.
Corrosion occurs in various forms in the refining process, such as pitting corrosion from water
droplets, embrittlement from hydrogen, and stress corrosion cracking from sulfide attack. From a
materials standpoint, carbon steel is used for upwards of 80 per cent of refinery components, which
is beneficial due to its low cost. Carbon steel is resistant to the most common forms of corrosion,
particularly from hydrocarbon impurities at temperatures below 205 °C, but other corrosive
chemicals and environments prevent its use everywhere. Common replacement materials are low
alloy steels containing chromium and molybdenum, with stainless steels containing more chromium
dealing with more corrosive environments. More expensive materials commonly used
are nickel, titanium, and copper alloys. These are primarily saved for the most problematic areas
where extremely high temperatures and/or very corrosive chemicals are present.
Corrosion is fought by a complex system of monitoring, preventative repairs and careful use of
materials. Monitoring methods include both offline checks taken during maintenance and online
monitoring. Offline checks measure corrosion after it has occurred, telling the engineer when
equipment must be replaced based on the historical information they have collected. This is referred
to as preventative management.
Online systems are a more modern development, and are revolutionizing the way corrosion is
approached. There are several types of online corrosion monitoring technologies such as linear
polarization resistance, electrochemical noise and electrical resistance. Online monitoring has
generally had slow reporting rates in the past (minutes or hours) and been limited by process
conditions and sources of error but newer technologies can report rates up to twice per minute with
much higher accuracy (referred to as real-time monitoring). This allows process engineers to treat
corrosion as another process variable that can be optimized in the system. Immediate responses to
process changes allow the control of corrosion mechanisms, so they can be minimized while also
maximizing production output. In an ideal situation having online corrosion information that is
accurate and real-time will allow conditions that cause high corrosion rates to be identified and
reduced. This is known as predictive management.
Materials methods include selecting the proper material for the application. In areas of minimal
corrosion, cheap materials are preferable, but when bad corrosion can occur, more expensive but
longer lasting materials should be used. Other materials methods come in the form of protective
barriers between corrosive substances and the equipment metals. These can be either a lining of
refractory material such as standard Portland cement or other special acid-resistant cements that
are shot onto the inner surface of the vessel. Also available are thin overlays of more expensive
metals that protect cheaper metal against corrosion without requiring lots of material.