Mark:

Course Code : CME103

Course Name : Chemical Engineering Drawing
Lecturer : Dr. Chew Kit Wayne
Academic Session : 09/2021
Assessment Title : Project 1
Submission Due Date : 12TH December 2021

Prepared by : Student ID Student Name

CME2004033 James Cheah Yu Shan
CME2004263 Poi Jin Voon
CME2002028 Chu Eng Eng

Date Received :

Feedback from Lecturer:

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 Own Work Declaration

I/We hereby understand my/our work would be checked for plagiarism or other misconduct,
and the softcopy would be saved for future comparison(s).

I/We hereby confirm that all the references or sources of citations have been correctly listed
or presented and I/we clearly understand the serious consequence caused by any intentional
or unintentional misconduct.

This work is not made on any work of other students (past or present), and it has not been
submitted to any other courses or institutions before.

Signature: JAMES JIN VOON ENG ENG

Date: 11/12/2021

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Table of Contents
1 Introduction........................................................................................................................4

2 Process Flow Diagram (PFD)............................................................................................5

2.1 Separation of Crude Oil...............................................................................................5

2.1.1 Desalting..............................................................................................................5

2.1.2 Atmospheric Distillation......................................................................................5

2.1.3 Vacuum Distillation.............................................................................................5

2.2 Reaction to convert low-value products into value-added products...........................6

2.2.1 Cracking...............................................................................................................6

2.2.2 Reforming............................................................................................................6

2.2.3 Coking..................................................................................................................6

2.3 Storage and blending of various products to form end-user products.........................7

2.3.1 Hydrotreating.......................................................................................................7

2.3.2 Blending...............................................................................................................7

3 Market survey on the production capacity of desired crude oil.........................................7

4 Process Layout Diagram (PLD).........................................................................................8

References................................................................................................................................11

Assessment rubrics...................................................................................................................14

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1 Introduction
Crude oil is a natural petroleum product that composed of hydrocarbon and other
organic materials. It is a limited non-renewable resource which can’t be replaced naturally.
Crude oil needs to be processed before it can be used. Hence, it will be refined to produce
usable products such as gasoline, diesel and various kind of petrochemicals. Each refined
petroleum products that extracted from crude oil has a specific purpose. For instance,
gasoline is used as fuels for motor vehicles, kerosene is used as jet fuel and naphtha function
as a major petrochemical feedstock. The modern crude oil refinery is designed to convert raw
crude oil into various useful products through refining operations. Crude oil refining
processes can be divided into three basic operation which are separation, conversion and
treatment.

First and foremost, crude oil separation is carried out by fractional distillation in the
distillation towers. It is the process by which the crude oil will be separated into different
hydrocarbon products based on their different boiling points. Each of these products has
different density, the least dense will be collected at the top while the denser fuels will be
collected at the bottom of the distillation tower.

The second stage of refining operations is conversion process. After the first stage of
refining, there will be many heavy hydrocarbon molecules remaining after the separation
process. To meet the demand for the lighter hydrocarbon products, the heavy molecules are
cracked into lighter ones. The conversion process is known as catalytic cracking because it
uses catalyst to speed up the chemical reaction (The Three stages of refining 2015). The
amount of the yield can be increase by adding hydrogen which is known as hydrocracking
process.

The last stage of crude oil refining is treatment. Treatment involves removing and
reducing impurities that are harmful and corrosive to environment. The purpose of this
process is to improve the air quality and optimize the effectiveness of catalytic converters
used to treat exhaust gas. The hydrogen used in the process will combines with the sulphur to
form hydrogen sulphide to remove sulphur.

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2 Process Flow Diagram (PFD)
2.1 Separation of Crude Oil
2.1.1 Desalting
Crude oil contains a variety of undesired substances such as gases, chloride salt, water
and dirt. Thus, a process of pre-treatment called desalting has to be carried out on the crude
oil before proceeding into other refinery processes. This is because the impurities in the crude
oil such as inorganic salts may cause corrosion or plugging of the equipment including
distillation column, heat exchanger and so on. Crude oil desalting is a crude oil washing
process by using water as the washing medium to remove the chloride salts and other
minerals from the crude oil (Pereira et al., 2015).

2.1.2 Atmospheric Distillation

Crude oil is a mixture of various hydrocarbons. The hydrocarbons have different
hydrocarbon chain lengths which results in their different boiling points where the longer the
chain the higher the boiling point. This difference in boiling points can be utilized to separate
them through fractional distillation (Kinsara & Demirbas, 2016). After the desalting process,
the desalted crude oil will undergo a fractional distillation process. In the fractional
distillation column, crude oil is being heated up to vapour using a heater. The vapour would
rise to the top of distillation unit to be condense back into liquids. During the condensation,
the hot vapour will be flow through a non-contact heat exchanger to heat up fresh incoming
crude oil feed. The vapour will then be condensed through a condenser and collected in a
reflux drum. Fractional distillation still consists of several set of trays to heat up and collect
the various liquid fractions of crude oil.

The lightest fractions of crude oil like butane and gasoline would rise to top of the
column as they have a lower boiling point. Medium weight crude oil what have moderate
boiling point like naphtha, kerosene and diesel would stay at the middle of column. Heavy
crude oil with the highest boiling points like asphalt will settle at the bottom of the tower
(Pinto & Moro, 2000). The temperature at the bottom of the still is limited to around 750°F as
the oil would thermally crack above this temperature (Eser, n.d.).

2.1.3 Vacuum Distillation

The heavy residuals after the atmospheric distillation still contains many medium
density products. Therefore, the residuals will be transferred into a vacuum distillation
column to undergo another distillation process to further recover the middle distillates. As the

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name implies, vacuum distillation is carried out under a vacuum or a significant lower
pressure than the atmospheric pressure (Agrawal, 2018). The boiling point of the bottoms
residuals from atmospheric distillation unit would be low enough for the lighter produces to
vaporise without degrading or cracking.

2.2 Reaction to convert low-value products into value-added products.

2.2.1 Cracking
After the separation part, there would still be a lot of hydrocarbons that are too heavy
to be evaporated. In order to catch up with the demand for lighter products, a process named
cracking is commonly used to break these heavy molecules into lighter ones. Cracking units
usually exist separately from distillation columns as cracking is a highly controlled process
("Refinery Processes", 2021). In cracking units, there may be one or more tower-shaped
hydrocracking units, furnaces, heat exchangers and other storing vessels ("Refining crude oil
- the refining process - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)", 2020).

There are few types of cracking such as hydrocracking and fluid catalytic cracking
which serves the same purpose although the mechanism may be different. Fluid catalytic
cracking process is a simple one-step process which break heavy hydrocarbons into smaller
molecules to make medium weight fuels like gasoline. On the other hand, hydrocracking
process would first convert unsaturated hydrocarbons into saturated by addition of hydrogen
followed by the breaking of saturated hydrocarbons into smaller components to produce
diesel (Rigutto, 2010).

2.2.2 Reforming
Another form of conversion from low-value products to value added- products is
called reforming. Reforming is able to increase the volume of gasoline as it can turn naphtha
into gasolines. This is because the hydrocarbons in both naphtha and gasoline have a similar
number of carbons atoms. Reforming is a process that requires heat, moderate pressure and
catalyst to be carried out. Hence, the reforming units consists of catalytic reactors that
requires cautiously controlled temperature and pressure.

2.2.3 Coking
Coking is a process that upgrades the bottoms residual from vacuum distillation into
higher-value products such as petroleum coke and naphtha coke. The operation of coking
take place in at temperature of 475°C – 520°C which thermal crack the residue feed severely.

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This converts the reside feed into gas, light and medium distillates and coke completely
without the conversion into residual oil (Fahim, Alsahhaf & Elkilani, 2010).

2.3 Storage and blending of various products to form end-user products.

2.3.1 Hydrotreating
Reforming process would produce additional hydrogen which can be recovered and
then used in the process of hydrotreating. Hydrotreating is a treating process in removing
contaminants from the crude oil products. This is because crude oil contains contaminants
that are corrosive including sulphur, nitrogen as well as heavy metals which are undesirable
in motor fuels.

2.3.2 Blending
The last major step in the crude oil refining is the process of blending various streams
into finished petroleum products. A typical refinery can produce as many as 8 to 15 different
streams of hydrocarbon to be mixed into blend stocks. Crude oil blending is done to meet
certain products’ specifications so that their commercial value can be maximized. Blending
can occur in few different types of processes such as blending along the pipeline at refinery,
batch blending in tanks and onboard blending into marine vessels ("Blending Process In
Refinery – Equinox", 2020).

3 Market survey on the production capacity of desired crude oil.

Petroleum industry refines crude oil and converts natural gas into variety of products.
It also deals with the distribution and marketing of petroleum-based products. Basically, a
refinery's selection of crude oils must be cost-effective and fulfil market demand for the
products it manufactures. This requires the use of appropriate processes as well as the
availability of the relevant plant and equipment. Each major oil refining company in Malaysia
must meet its particular market demand, both in terms of volume and product trends.

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 Table 1: Petroleum Product Yields on the Bases of Existing Design Capacity

Table 1 above shows a comparison of the petroleum product yields based on the
existing design capacity of the three refineries in Malaysia. There is a difference between
each refinery's maximum throughput in terms of volume of throughput per stream day
(BPSD) and volume of throughput per crude day (BPCD). When all three refineries are
combined, the overall refinery output is roughly around 140,000 barrels of oil per day-
including 32,610 barrels from ESMB, 66,500 barrels from Shell Port Dickson, and the
remaining 40,600 barrels from Shell Lutong Plant (ADNAN, 1978). This theoretical
maximum capacity to generate finished petroleum products is crucial as it will establish the
refineries existing and future capacity to fulfil demand in Malaysia.

According to researches, Malaysia crude oil consumption was reported at 727.946

Barrel/Day in the year of 2020. However, the crude oil production was reported at 539.609
Barrel/Day in the year of 2020. In order to meet the usage demand of the crude oil, the
desired production of crude oil in Malaysia should be more than the consumption which is
around 800 Barrel/Day.

4 Process Layout Diagram (PLD)

The plant layout for the operating units and equipment must be designed based on the
safety and efficiency of the process. In order to achieve this, the spacing and sizing have to be
organized accordingly to maximize efficiency and safety ness and at the same time minimize
the cost of allocating spaces and so on. Generally, the refinery items and equipment are

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placed away from one another to promote safety as it minimizes the spreading of fire and
provides sufficient space for maintenance. High hazard area that involves flammable liquids
at high pressure, combustible liquids at beyond flash point, and highly reactive compounds.
Typically, the major process units are allocated with spacing of 25 m and above ("Safety
Moment #89: Layout of Process Facilities", 2020).

The pipe diameter for transmission type of pipeline is around 10 in or 0.25 m ("Types
of Pipeline Every Oil and Gas Engineer Should Know About - Enerpac Blog", 2017). Since,
the pipe diameter is in 10 inches or 0.25m, hence the pump should be larger than the pipe. A
pump with the size of 12 in x 12 in would be suitable for this case ("Standard Centrifugal -
Pioneer Pump, Inc. - Americas", 2021).

For an atmospheric distillation column that can produce 10,000 barrels per day, the
column diameter required is 1.52 m (Mamudu et al., 2019). The diameter for an atmospheric
distillation column that can take in 100,000 barrels per day has a value of around 4.88 m
(Arjmand, Moreno & Liu, 2011). According to Papavinasam & Abayarathna (2014), the
diameter of crude oil vacuum distillation columns is usually around 14 meters and about 50
meters in height. This kind of column as able to account for 160,000 barrels per day.

The diameters of the coke drums range from 4 to 9 metres (13 to 30 feet), with a
straight side of roughly 25 metres (82 feet) and a 1.5 metre diameter top blind flange closing
and a two meter diameter (Paul & Ellis, 1998). Typically, the drum is made of 25 mm carbon
steel with a 2.8 mm stainless steel cladding on the inside to prevent sulphur corrosion. The
pressure varies between 1 and 5.9 bars, with a usual range of 2 to 3 bars. The vapour outflow
nozzles, which have a diameter of 30 to 60 cm, are situated at the drum's top. On modern
cokers, pressure relief valves are also located on the top of the drum. The outside of the drum
is insulated with approximately 10 inches of foam.

Fire furnaces are kept at least 15 metres away from other hydrocarbon-bearing
equipment. (Botermans & Smith, 2013). A bottom-fired heater's burner is 2.1–2.7 m above
grade, at a height that allows an operator to work underneath it. Fired furnace has a diameter
of 1.8m to large crude oil heaters which up to 20 m tube length. (Moran, 2017). The catalytic
reforming of carbon dioxide (CO2) to methane (CH4) is carried out by traditional fixed-bed
reactor system which has an internal diameter of 2.438 m (Zakari Yusuf, Aderemi, Patel &
Mujtaba, 2019). The internal diameter of the hydrocracking reactor with a feed flow rate of
221.9 m3/hr at 183 bar and 425 °C in the industrial plant is 4.734 m (Farag, Yousef, &

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Farouq, 2016). The thickness of the walls is greater than 8 inches or 20 cm (Robinson &
Dolbear, 2007).

The reactor in Fluid Catalytic Cracking (FCC) unit has an internal diameter approximately 3
m and height of 45 m, producing a flow rate of 50000 barrels/day (331.2 m 3/hr) at feed
temperature of 562.7 °F (294.9 °C) and reactor pressurized temperature of 948.6 °F (509.2
°C) (Khandeparker, 2012). The reactor diameter is 2 m and the ideal riser has a length of 30
to 35 m (Khandeparker, 2012). Heat exchanger has a diameter of 9.1meter and a total plot
area of 500m x 70m (S., W, n.d). The desalter vessel has a length of 21 m while a diameter of
4.2 m. (Mohammadi, Mohammadi & Nonahal, 2018)

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References
ADNAN, M. U. H. A. M. M. A. D. (1978, June). SOAS University of London. Retrieved
November 17, 2021, from https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/28739/1/10672907.pdf

Agrawal, A. (2018). Retrieved 11 November 2021, from

https://cdn.ihs.com/www/pdf/RW2018-04-toc.pdf

Arjmand, M., Moreno, L., & Liu, L. (2011). Energy Saving in Crude Oil Atmospheric
Distillation Columns by Modifying the Vapor Feed Inlet Tray. Chemical Engineering
& Technology, 34(8), 1359-1367. doi: 10.1002/ceat.201000277

Blending Process In Refinery – Equinox. (2020). Retrieved 24 October 2021, from

https://equinoxsoftwareservices.com/blending-process-in-refinery/

Botermans, R., & Smith, P. (2013, October 30). Fired heaters. Advanced Piping Design.
Retrieved December 9, 2021, from
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9781933762180500131.

Eser, S. Atmospheric and Vacuum Distillation Units | FSC 432: Petroleum Refining.
Retrieved 11 November 2021, from https://www.e-
education.psu.edu/fsc432/content/atmospheric-and-vacuum-distillation-units

Fahim, M., Alsahhaf, T., & Elkilani, A. (2010). Thermal Cracking and
Coking. Fundamentals Of Petroleum Refining, 123-152. doi: 10.1016/b978-0-444-
52785-1.00006-1

Farag, H. A., Yousef, N. S., & Farouq, R. (2016, June 1). (PDF) hydrotreating and
hydrocracking: Fundamentals. ResearchGate. Retrieved December 1, 2021, from
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227247349_Hydrotreating_and_Hydrocrack
ing_Fundamentals

Kinsara, R., & Demirbas, A. (2016). Upgrading of crude oil via distillation
processes. Petroleum Science And Technology, 34(14), 1300-1306. doi:
10.1080/10916466.2016.1200080

Khandeparker, A. S. (2012, May 11). Study of different operating parameters of FCC unit
with Aspen-HYSYS. Retrieved December 1, 2021, from
https://core.ac.uk/download/53188387.pdf.

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Mohammadi, F., Mohammadi, M., & Nonahal, B. (2018). Petroleum and Coal. A
COMPREHENSIVE ELECTRICAL MODEL FOR THE ELECTROSTATIC
DESALTING PROCESS OF CRUDE OIL. Retrieved from
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334192732_Article_Open_Access_A_COM

Moran, S. (2017, January 13). Furnaces and fired equipment. Process Plant Layout (Second
Edition). Retrieved December 9, 2021, from
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780128033555000214.

Papavinasam, S., & Abayarathna, D. (2014). Corrosion control in the oil and gas industry.
London: Gulf Professional Pub. Retrieved from
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/atmospheric-distillation-unit

Paul, C. A., & Ellis, P. J. (1998, March 9). Tutorial: Delayed coking fundamentals - inside
mines. Retrieved December 9, 2021, from
https://inside.mines.edu/~jjechura/Refining/DECOKTUT.pdf.

Pereira, J., Velasquez, I., Blanco, R., Sanchez, M., Pernalete, C., & Canelón, C. (2015).
Crude Oil Desalting Process. Advances In Petrochemicals. doi: 10.5772/61274

Pinto, J., & Moro, L. (2000). A planning model for petroleum refineries. Brazilian Journal Of
Chemical Engineering, 17(4-7), 575-586. doi: 10.1590/s0104-66322000000400022

Refinery Processes. (2021). Retrieved 24 October 2021, from https://www.api.org/oil-and-

natural-gas/wells-to-consumer/fuels-and-refining/refineries/how-refinery-
works/refinery-processes

Refining crude oil - the refining process - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
(2020). Retrieved 24 October 2021, from https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-
and-petroleum-products/refining-crude-oil-the-refining-process.php

Rigutto, M. (2010). Cracking and Hydrocracking. Zeolites And Catalysis, 547-584. doi:
10.1002/9783527630295.ch18

Robinson, P. R., & Dolbear, G. E. (2007, October 1). (PDF) hydrotreating and
hydrocracking: Fundamentals. ResearchGate. Retrieved December 1, 2021, from
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227247349_Hydrotreating_and_Hydrocracki
ng_Fundamentals

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Safety Moment #89: Layout of Process Facilities. (2020). Retrieved 25 November 2021, from
https://iansutton.com/safety-moments/safety-moment-89-layout-process-facilities

Standard Centrifugal - Pioneer Pump, Inc. - Americas. (2021). Retrieved 9 December 2021,
from https://pioneerpump.com/americas/products/pumps/standard-centrifugal

PREHENSIVE_ELECTRICAL_MODEL_FOR_THE_ELECTROSTATIC_DESALT
ING_PROCESS_OF_CRUDE_OIL

Types Of Pipeline Every Oil and Gas Engineer Should Know About - Enerpac Blog. (2017).
Retrieved 9 December 2021, from https://blog.enerpac.com/types-of-pipeline-every-
oil-and-gas-engineer-should-know-about/

S., W. (n.d.). Heat transfer by air cooled heat exchangers. Air-cooled heat exchangers are
generally used where a process system generates heat which must be removed, but for
which there is no local use. Retrieved December 9, 2021, from
https://www.wermac.org/equipment/air-cooled_heatexchanger.html

Zakari Yusuf, A., Aderemi, B., Patel, R., & Mujtaba, I. (2019). Study Of Industrial Naphtha
Catalytic Reforming Reactions Via Modelling And Simulation. Retrieved from
http://file:///D:/Downloads/processes-07-00192%20(1).pdf

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Assessment rubrics

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