Refineries, petroleum industries

Even with direct access to the basic raw materials, the refiners were slow to enter the field. Eventually, in the years leading up to World War II, the refiners began to perceive how their refining operations could be supplemented by petrochemical manufacture. By the start of world War II, they were beginning to compete m earnest with the chemical industiy in petrochemical synthetics markets. Between 1929 and 1941, the byproduct refinery gases consumed by both the chemical and petroleum industries for the purpose of manufacturing chemicals more than doubled, from 38.6 million barrels to 83.4 million barrels. 

Carbon monoxide, refinery gas, petroleum coke (petroleum industry)... 

The history of corrosion inhibitors and neutralizers and their invention, development, and application in the petroleum industry is documented by a review of Fisher [605]. Early corrosion inhibitor applications in each of the various segments of the industry, including oil wells, natural gas plants, refineries, and product pipelines, are reviewed. 

The major disadvantage of large plants is their vulnerability to large losses. In 1967 an explosion and tire in a Cities Service oil refinery at Lake Charles killed 7 employees and injured 14.6 The damage and business interruption costs exceeded 30,000,000. Usually the losses are not this large. However, in 1966 there were 20 fires in the chemical and petroleum industry, which caused damages in excess of 250,000.7 Even if there is no fire, the failure of a bearing on an ammonia compressor can cause the plant to shut down for a number of days two days for cool down, one day for repairs, two days for startup. The loss in sales from this interruption alone could exceed 50,000 per day, or a total of 250,000. ... 

The tides of fortune rise and ebb, and by the 21st century, MTBE was found to be polluting aquifers. In addition, the efficacy of adding oxygenates to gasoline as older cars were junked became contentious. The bloom fell off the MTBE rose, and the petroleum industry has to decide what to do with all the MTBE capacity, most of which is in refineries. 

The petroleum industry, one of the world s largest industries, has four major branches [1]. The production branch explores for oil and brings it to the surface in oilfields. The transportation branch sends crude oil to refineries and delivers the refined products to consumers. The refining branch processes crude oil into useful products. The marketing branch sells and distributes the petroleum products to consumers. The subject of this chapter is the treatment of liquid wastes from the production and refining branches. 

The petroleum industry uses them mostly as roughing devices to reduce the loading on activated sludge systems. In some cases, trickling filters are used to pretreat steam-stripped sour water before mixing it with other refinery wastewater streams for secondary treatment [48]. 

The olefins—ethylene, propylene, and the butylenes—are derived from natural gas and petroleum. Methane is the major constituent in natural gas. The aromatics— benzene, toluene, and the xylenes— are derived from petroleum. About 90% by weight of the organic chemicals in the world comes from natural gas and petroleum. But actually only 3% of this crude oil and 6% of refinery output in the U.S. is processed into chemicals, with the rest going as various fuels. Although we are a small user of the petroleum industry, this 3-6% going to petrochemical feedstock is important to us ... 

All in all, the petroleum industry has invested considerable effort in developing sophisticated mathematical programming models to help planners provide overall planning schemes for refinery operations, crude oil evaluation, and other related tasks. 

In parallel with this development, we discuss the chemical and petroleum industries and the major processes by which most of the classical products and feedstocks are made. We begin in Chapter 2 with a section on The Real World, in which we describe the reactors and reactions in a petroleum refinery and then the reactions and reactors in making polyester. These are all catalytic multiphase reactors of almost unbelievable size and complexity. By Chapter 12 the principles of operation of these reactors will have been developed. 

Construction of the distillation units of 1925 was based to a large extent upon the practical experience and know-how of refinery men rather than upon theoretical design methods. In fact, the theory and practice of distillation which had been developed primarily by the wine industry were not adopted by the petroleum industry until the widespread use of the automobile forced the refiners to better distillation methods to increase their yield of gasoline and to improve its quality. 

A mathematical procedure for the design of fractionating towers developed by Sorel (54) in 1893 had little acceptance by the petroleum industry because it was based on treatment of binary mixtures, such as alcohol and water the required vapor-liquid data on petroleum products were in general not available the calculations were laborious the original publication was in French and not widely available to American industry and the builders of refinery equipment were seldom staffed to use the procedure. 

Azeotropic Distillation. The concept of azeotropic distillation is not new. The use of benzene to dehydrate ethyl alcohol and butyl acetate to dehydrate acetic acid has been in commercial operation for many years. However, it was only during World War II that entrainers other than steam were used by the petroleum industry. Two azeotropic processes for the segregation of toluene from refinery streams were developed and placed in operation. One used methyl ethyl ketone and water as the azeo-troping agent (81) the other employed methanol (1). 

Filtration through granular materials to achieve removal of suspended matter and associated materials such as oil is an old concept. It is, however, receiving new attention in many areas in the petroleum industry where there is a concern for improving the quality of injection waters in secondary recovery operations and reducing the biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), oil, and suspended solids levels in refinery waste waters. 

Bitumen - [ASPHALT] (Vol 3) - [FERTILIZERS] (Vol 10) - QIGNITE AND BROWN COAL] (Vol 15) - [FUELS, SYNTHETIC - LIQUID FUELS] (Vol 12) - [PETROLEUM - NOMENCLATURE IN THE PETROLEUM INDUSTRY] (Vol 18) - [PETROLEUM - REFINERY PROCESSES, SURVEY] (Vol 18) - [BUILD INGMATERIALS - SURVEY] (Vol 4) -in adhesives [ADHESIVES] (Vol 1) -role m petroleum origin [PETROLEUM - ORIGIN OF PETROLEUM] (Vol 18)... 

Sulfur removal, as currently practiced in the petroleum industry, can be achieved using three options. The first option involves the use of thermal methods such as the various cracking techniques that concentrate the majority of the sulfur into the nonvolatile products, i.e., coke. Such processes are located in the conversion section of a refinery (Figure 4-1). The remainder of the sulfur may occur in the... 

Emulsions may be encountered throughout all stages of the process industries. For example, in the petroleum industry (see Chapter 11) both desirable and undesirable emulsions permeate the entire production cycle, including emulsion drilling fluid, injected or in situ emulsions used in enhanced oil-recovery processes, wellhead production emulsions, pipeline transportation emulsions, and refinery process emulsions [2], Such emulsions may contain not just oil and water, but also solid particles and even gas, as occur in the large Canadian oil sands mining and processing operations [2-4],... 

Lewis, V.E. Minyard, W.F. Antifoaming and Defoaming in Refineries in Foams, Fundamentals and Applications in the Petroleum Industry, Schramm, L.L. (Ed.), American Chemical Society Washington, DC, 1994, pp. 461—483. 

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