Refineries, cost

Cost curves of this type have been presented for petroleum refinery costs in the past. The curves presented herein have been adjusted to eliminate certain costs such as utilities, storage, offsite facilities, and location cost differentials. Separate data, included in indirect cost, provide the cost of these items. The facilities included have been defined in an attempt to improve accuracy. 

Table A4.1 Nelson Farrer Refinery Cost Indices...

There are several inflation or cost indexes in use. Exanqrles are the Chemical Engineering Cost Index (CE Index), and the Nelson Refinery Cost Index. Chemical Engineering magazine publishes the CE Index regularly, whereas the Oil and Gas Journal reports the Nelson Refinery Index. We will use the CE Index. Cost indexes are relative to some time in the past. Chemical Engineering magazine defined the CE Index as equal to 100 during 1957-1959 when plant costs were relatively stable. 

Figure 16.1 compares, on a semilogarithmic plot, the values of the CE Plant Cost Index, MS Process Industries Average Cost Index, NF Refinery Cost Index, and ENR Construction Cost index for the period of 1975 to 2000. The same values are tabulated in Table 16.6. It can be seen that costs increased at a more rapid aimual rate from 1975 to 1981 than from 1981 to 2000. In the latter 19-year period, the cost indexes have increased by factors of 1.327 for CE, 1.480 for MS, 1.707 for NF, and 1.755 for ENR. These factors correspond to the following respective increases per year 1.50%, 2.08%, 2.85%, and 3.00%. Included in Figure 16.1 and Table 16.6 are values for the U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI), published by the... 

Several operations employing a catalyst may be part of the petroleum refinery. The management of catalyst inventory represents an important part of the overall refinery cost. As shown in Fig. 2, the development of refining is closely connected with the growth of the use catalysts. In the past, refining catalysts accounted for more than half of the total worldwide catalyst consumption. Today because of the importance of environmental catalysis, refining catalysts account for about one third of the total catalyst consumption. Future advances in development of more active and stable catalysts may further decrease the overall consumption of refinery catalyst. 

The petroleum industry is cost intensive. Digging a deep offshore oil well costs more than 100 million, and a new world-class refinery costs up to 4 billion. 

Direct operating costs for a 100 000 t/a iead refinery (costs in US as at June 2000). 

The oil-well fires burned more than 600 million barrels, enough to supply the United States for more than a month. The fire-fighting effort cost US 1.5 billion. Rebuilding Kuwait s refineries cost another US 5 billion. In all, Kuwait spent between US 30 and US 50 billion to recover from the Iraqi invasion. 

A simple, low cost steel for high temperature service in electric power generation (qv) is the C—0.5% Mo steel known as carbon—half moly, which was widely used for many years. The power industry and oil refineries have turned to 1.25% Cr—0.5% Mo and 2.25% Cr—1% Mo steels for high stress and high temperature service, because these steels have improved resistance to graphitization and oxidation, as weU as higher creep and mpture strength. 

The indirect hydration, also called the sulfuric acid process, practiced by the three U.S. domestic producers, was the only process used worldwide until ICI started up the first commercial direct hydration process in 1951. Both processes use propylene and water as raw materials. Early problems of high corrosion, high energy costs, and air pollution using the indirect process led to the development of the direct hydration process in Europe. However, a high purity propylene feedstock is required. In the indirect hydration process, C -feedstock streams from refinery off-gases containing only 40—60 wt % propylene are often used in the United States. 

The ethylene feedstock used in most plants is of high purity and contains 200—2000 ppm of ethane as the only significant impurity. Ethane is inert in the reactor and is rejected from the plant in the vent gas for use as fuel. Dilute gas streams, such as treated fluid-catalytic cracking (FCC) off-gas from refineries with ethylene concentrations as low as 10%, have also been used as the ethylene feedstock. The refinery FCC off-gas, which is otherwise used as fuel, can be an attractive source of ethylene even with the added costs of the treatments needed to remove undesirable impurities such as acetylene and higher olefins. Its use for ethylbenzene production, however, is limited by the quantity available. Only large refineries are capable of deUvering sufficient FCC off-gas to support an ethylbenzene—styrene plant of an economical scale. 

Two principal factors affected the U.S. sulfuric acid industry in the 1980s. The first was the increased availabiUty of recovered sulfur vs Frasch sulfur (see SuLFURREMOVAL AND recovery). This occurred because of environmental concerns and regulations forcing more sulfur to be recovered at refineries, power plants, etc. The effect of this change was that the cost of sulfur in the marketplace became driven largely by the cost of nonsulfur industries, rather than by the traditional discretionary sulfur producers, and tended to stabilize U.S. sulfur prices. 

Developments. Electrolytic refining requires a large capital investment, and labor costs per kilogram of copper produced are high. Most refineries have traditionally operated at current densities of about 240 A/m. Thus, a tank house area of approximately 40 m is required per ton of copper produced daily. The use of higher current densities reduces capital requirements but may impair deposition efficiency and product quaUty. 

Table 9-42 presents information on some cost indices for the United States. Engineering News-Record updates its construction-cost index in March, June, September, and December. The Oil and Gas Journal gives the Nelson-Farrar refinery indices in the first issue of each quarter. The Chemical Engineering plant-cost index and Marshall and Swift equipment-cost index are given in each issue of the pubhcation Chemical Engineering. Derivation of the base values is referred to in the respective publications. 

This type of clarifier is used in apphcations such as prehminaiy oil-water separations in refineries and clarification of waste streams in steel mills. When multiple units are employed, common walls are possible, reducing construction costs and saving on floor space. Overflow clarities, however, generally are not as good as with circiilar clarifiers, due primarily to reduced overflow weir length for eqmvalent areas. 

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