Refining Industry

The refining industry generally seeks either to eliminate asphaltenes or to convert them to lighter materials because the presence of heteroelements cause pollution problems, e.g., sulfur and nitrogen, catalyst poisoning, and corrosion (formation of metal vanadates during combustion). 

However, in practice the octane number has a ceiling imposed by refining industry constraints such as composition, lead reduction or elimination, cost, and demand volume and distribution. 

In every part of the world, the same type of classification as above is found for fuels premium or regular, with or without lead. The octane numbers can be different from one country to another depending on the extent of development of their car populations and the capabilities of their local refining industries. The elimination of lead is becoming the rule wherever there are large automobile populations and severe anti-pollution requirements. Thus the United States, Japan and Canada no longer distribute leaded fuels. (... 

The potential advantages of LPG concern essentially the environmental aspects. LPG s are simple mixtures of 3- and 4-carbon-atom hydrocarbons with few contaminants (very low sulfur content). LPG s contain no noxious additives such as lead and their exhaust emissions have little or no toxicity because aromatics are absent. This type of fuel also benefits often enough from a lower taxation. In spite of that, the use of LPG motor fuel remains static in France, if not on a slightly downward trend. There are several reasons for this situation little interest from automobile manufacturers, reluctance on the part of automobile customers, competition in the refining industry for other uses of and fractions, (alkylation, etherification, direct addition into the gasoline pool). However, in 1993 this subject seems to have received more interest (Hublin et al., 1993). 

In Europe and elsewhere in the world, the trend towards reformulated gasoline has scarcely begun it is very likely, however, that it will be felt around the beginning of 2000, with more or less profound impact on the refining industry. 

Owing to its flexibility, the refining industry is abie to meet the changes in demand and quality ... 

The series Petroleum Reflning" will comprise five volumes covering the following aspects of the petroleum refining industry ... 

Urea has the remarkable property of forming crystalline complexes or adducts with straight-chain organic compounds. These crystalline complexes consist of a hoUow channel, formed by the crystallized urea molecules, in which the hydrocarbon is completely occluded. Such compounds are known as clathrates. The type of hydrocarbon occluded, on the basis of its chain length, is determined by the temperature at which the clathrate is formed. This property of urea clathrates is widely used in the petroleum-refining industry for the production of jet aviation fuels (see Aviation and other gas-TURBINE fuels) and for dewaxing of lubricant oils (see also Petroleum, refinery processes). The clathrates are broken down by simply dissolving urea in water or in alcohol. 

Cmde oil can be easily separated into its principal products, ie, gasoline, distillate fuels, and residual fuels, by simple distillation. However, neither the amounts nor quaUty of these natural products matches demand. The refining industry has devoted considerable research and engineering effort as well as financial resources to convert naturally occurring molecules into acceptable fuels. Industry s main challenge has been to devise new ways to meet the tremendous demand for gasoline without, at the same time, overproducing other petroleum products. 

There are environmental concerns over the use of HE catalyst. The refining industry has taken steps to reduce the likelihood of an accidental release and to minimizp the environmental impact in the event of a release. As a result of these environmental concerns, most new units use sulfuric acid catalysts. 

Reduction of metal oxides with hydrogen is of interest in the metals refining industry (94,95) (see Metallurgy). Hydrogen is also used to reduce sulfites to sulfides in one step in the removal of SO2 pollutants (see Airpollution) (96). Hydrogen reacts directiy with SO2 under catalytic conditions to produce elemental sulfur and H2S (97—98). Under certain conditions, hydrogen reacts with nitric oxide, an atmospheric poUutant and contributor to photochemical smog, to produce N2 ... 

Dead-burned magnesia, characterized by large crystaUite size and very low chemical reactivity, is resistant to the basic slags employed in the metals refining industry. It reacts very slowly with strong acids, and does not readily hydrate or react with carbon dioxide unless finely pulverized. 

The trends in total world mine production rates from 1987 to 1992 are evident in Table 3. An 8-yr averaging shows ca 2% growth in annual consumption. The average price of nickel has varied from year to year the actual price more than doubled from 1985 to 1988. However, third quarter 1993 prices dropped below mid-1980 prices to < 4.50/kg. Based on the 1992 world nickel consumption level of 813,900 t and the average annual London Metal Exchange (LME) nickel price, the 1992 monetary value for the nickel mining and refining industry would be approximately 6 x 10 . ... 

The impetus to develop the petroleum refining industry came from several changes in life-styles. The increased needs for illuminants, for fuel to drive the factories of the industrial revolution, for gasoline to power the automobiles, as well as the demand for aviation fuel, all contributed to the increased use of petroleum. 

The inorganic tin compound that has received the most study from a toxicological viewpoint is stannic oxide. Autopsies performed on workers in the tin mining and refining industry, who inhaled tin oxide dust for as long as 20 yr, disclosed no pulmonary fibrosis (57). Inhalation for long periods produces a benign, symptomless pneumoconiosis with no toxic systemic effects (58). 

Petroleum Production and Refining. Specific polyamine derivatives are used in the petroleum production and refining industries as corrosion inhibitors, demulsifiers, neutralizers, and additives for certain operations. 

This section describes the major industrial processes within the petroleum refining industry, ineluding the materials and equipment used, and the processes employed. The section is necessary for an understanding of the interrelationships between the industrial processes, the types of air emissions, and control and pollution prevention approaehes. Deseriptions of eommonly used production processes, assoeiated raw materials, by-produets produeed are first deseribed. Petroleum refining is the physieal, thermal, and chemical separation of erude oil into its major distillation fraetions, which are then further proeessed through a series of separation and eonversion steps into finished petroleum produets. The primary products of the industry fall into three major categories ... 

Relatively large volumes of water are used by the petroleum refining industry. Four types of wastewater are produced surface water runoff, cooling water, process water, and sanitary wastewater. Surface water runoff is intermittent and... 

When discussing material outputs of the petroleum refining industry, it is important to note the relationship between the outputs of the industry itself and the outputs resulting from the use of refmery products. Petroleum refineries play an important role in the U.S. economy, supplying approximately 40% of the total energy used in the U.S. and virtually all of the energy consumed in the transportation sector. 

According to TRI data, the petroleum refining industry releases (discharges to the air, water, or land without treatment) and transfers (shipped off-site) a total of 482 million pounds of pollutants per year, made up of 103 different chemicals. This represents about 11 % of the total pounds of TRI chemicals released and transferred by all manufacturers in a year. In comparison, the chemical industry generates on the average 2.5 billion pounds per year, accounting for 33% of all releases and transfers. 

Overall, the petroleum refining industry s releases declined between 1988 and... 

Of the top ten most frequently reported toxic chemicals on the TRI list, the prevalence of volatile chemicals explains the air intensive toxic chemical loading of the refining industry. Nine of the ten most commonly reported toxic chemicals are highly volatile. Seven of the ten are aromatic hydrocarbons (benzene, toluene, xylene, cyclohexane, 1,2,4-trimethylbenzene, and ethylbenzene). 

Additionally, the equipment used in the petroleum refining industry are very... 

Despite low collection efficiencies, settling chambers have been used extensively in the past. The metals refining industries have used settling chambers to collect large particles, such as arsenic trioxide from the smelting of copper ore. 

As mentioned earlier the ease or difficulty of separating two products depends on the difference in their vapor pressures or volatilities. There are situations in the refining industry in which it is desirable to recover a single valuable compound in high purity from a mixture with other hydrocarbons which have boiling points so close to the more valuable product that separation by conventional distillation is a practical impossibility. Two techniques which may be applied to these situations are azeotropic distillation and extractive distillation. Both methods depend upon the addition to the system of a third component which increases the relative volatility of the constituents to be separated. 

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