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Each refinery has its own unique arrangement and combination of refining processes largely determined by the refinery location, desired products and economic considerations. Some modern petroleum refineries process as much as 800,000 to 900,000 barrels (127,000 to 143,000 cubic meters) per day of crude oil. [citation needed]
A typical fluid catalytic cracking unit in a petroleum refinery. Fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) is the conversion process used in petroleum refineries to convert the high-boiling point, high-molecular weight hydrocarbon fractions of petroleum (crude oils) into gasoline, alkene gases, and other petroleum products.
The image below is a schematic flow diagram of a typical oil refinery that depicts the various unit 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.
Midstream operations and processes include the following: Gathering: The gathering process employs narrow, low-pressure pipelines to connect oil- and gas-producing wells to larger, long-haul pipelines or processing facilities. [33] Processing/refining: Processing and refining operations turn crude oil and gas into marketable products.
Fluid catalytic cracking is a commonly used process, and a modern oil refinery will typically include a cat cracker, particularly at refineries in the US, due to the high demand for gasoline. [10] [11] [12] The process was first used around 1942 and employs a powdered catalyst. During WWII, the Allied Forces had plentiful supplies of the ...
The hot crude oil is then passed into a distillation column that allows the separation of the crude oil into different fractions depending on the difference in volatility. The pressure at the top is maintained at 1.2–1.5 atm [ 2 ] so that the distillation can be carried out at close to atmospheric pressure, and therefore it is known as the ...
However, independently of the crude oil used in the refinery, all catalysts require a maximum final boiling point of the naphtha feedstock of 180 °C. Normally, the catalyst can be regenerated perhaps 3 or 4 times before it must be returned to the manufacturer for reclamation of the valuable platinum and/or rhenium content.
The Penex process is a continuous catalytic process used in the refining of crude oil. It isomerizes light naphtha (C 5 /C 6) into higher-octane, branched C 5 /C 6 molecules. It also reduces the concentration of benzene in the gasoline pool. [1] It was first used commercially in 1958. [2]