Petroleum Refining / 3rd Stage

Petroleum refinery processes

Introduction
Crude oil is a complex mixture of naturally occurring hydrocarbons. The petroleum
refining industry converts crude oil into more than 2500 refined products, including
liquefied petroleum gas, gasoline, kerosene, aviation fuel, diesel fuel, fuel oil, lubricating
oil and petrochemical industry feedstock. Petroleum refining activities start with receipt
of the crude oil at the refinery, followed by multiple petroleum handling and refining
operations and terminate with storage of the refined products prior to shipment.
The petroleum refining industry employs a variety of processes to manufacture multiple
products. A refinery’s processing flow scheme is largely determined by the composition
of the crude oil feedstock and the petroleum products it chooses to manufacture.
Figure 1 illustrates a schematic for a crude oil refinery process.
Refining operations
Petroleum refining processes and operations can be separated into five basic areas:
1. Fractionation (distillation) is the separation of crude oil in atmospheric and
vacuum distillation towers into groups of hydrocarbon compounds of differing
boiling-point ranges called "fractions" or "cuts."
2. Conversion Processes change the size and/or structure of hydrocarbon
molecules. These processes include:
 Decomposition (dividing) by thermal and catalytic cracking;
 Unification (combining) through alkylation and polymerization; and
 Alteration (rearranging) with isomerization and catalytic reforming
3. Treatment Processes to prepare hydrocarbon streams for additional processing
and to prepare finished products. Treatment may include removal or separation
of aromatics and naphthenes, impurities and undesirable contaminants.
Treatment may involve chemical or physical separation e.g. dissolving,
absorption, or precipitation using a variety and combination of processes
including desalting, drying, hydrodesulfurizing, solvent refining, sweetening,
solvent extraction, and solvent dewaxing.
4. Formulating and Blending is the process of mixing and combining hydrocarbon
fractions, additives, and other components to produce finished products with
specific performance properties.
5. Other Refining Operations include:
 light-ends recovery;
 sour-water stripping;
 solid waste, process-water and wastewater treatment;
 cooling, storage and handling and product movement;
 hydrogen production;
 acid and tail-gas treatment;
 Sulfur recovery

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Auxiliary Operations and Facilities include:

 Light, steam and power generation;
 Process and fire water systems;
 Flares and relief systems;
 Furnaces and heaters;
 Pumps and valves;
 Supply of steam, air, nitrogen, and other plant gases;
 Noise and pollution controls;
 Sampling, testing, and inspecting and laboratory;

Modern Petroleum Processing

Seven Basic Operations in Petroleum Processing

Physical and chemical processes

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Figure 1: Overall Refinery flow

CRUDE OIL PRETREATMENT (DESALTING)

a. Crude oil often contains water, inorganic salts, suspended solids, and water-soluble
trace metals. As a first step in the refining process, to reduce corrosion, plugging, and
fouling of equipment and to prevent poisoning the catalysts in processing units, these
contaminants must be removed by desalting (dehydration).
b. The two most typical methods of crude-oil desalting, chemical and electrostatic
separation use hot water as the extraction agent. In chemical desalting, water and
chemical surfactant (demulsifiers) are added to the crude, heated so that salts and other
impurities dissolve into the water or attach to the water, and then held in a tank where
they settle out.
Electrical desalting is the application of high-voltage electrostatic charges to concentrate
suspended water globules in the bottom of the settling tank. Surfactants are added only
when the crude has a large amount of suspended solids. Both methods of desalting are
continuous. A third and less-common process involves filtering heated crude using
diatomaceous earth.
c. The feedstock crude oil is heated to between 150° and 350°F (65.6 to 176.7 oC) to
reduce viscosity and surface tension for easier mixing and separation of the water. The

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temperature is limited by the vapor pressure of the crude-oil feedstock. In both

methods other chemicals may be added. Ammonia is often used to reduce corrosion.
Caustic or acid may be added to adjust the pH of the water wash. Wastewater and
contaminants are discharged from the bottom of the settling tank to the wastewater
treatment facility. The desalted crude is continuously drawn from the top of the settling
tanks and sent to the crude distillation (fractionating) tower.

Figure 2: Desalting of crude oil

Desalting Unit
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Distillation:
Distillation is the most common separation technique and it consumes enormous
amounts of energy, both in terms of cooling and heating requirements.
Distillation can contribute to more than 50% of plant operating costs.
The various components of crude oil have different sizes, weights and boiling
temperatures; so, the first step is to separate these components.
Because they have different boiling temperatures, they can be separated easily by a
process called fractional distillation.
Fractional distillation is useful for separating a mixture of substances with narrow
differences in boiling points, and is the most important step in the refining process.
Very few of the components come out of the fractional distillation column ready for
market. Many of them must be chemically processed to make other fractions. For
example, only 40% of distilled crude oil is gasoline; however, gasoline is one of the
major products made by oil companies. Rather than continually distilling large quantities
of crude oil, oil companies chemically process some other fractions from the distillation
column to make gasoline; this processing increases the yield of gasoline from each
barrel of crude oil.
Distillation of crude oil occurs in distillation columns or towers.

Main Components of Distillation Columns:

 A vertical shell where separation of
liquid components is done.
 Column internals e.g. trays/plates
and/or packing which are used to
enhance component separations.
 A reboiler to provide the necessary
vaporization for the distillation
process.
 A condenser to cool and condense the
vapour leaving the top of the column.
 A reflux drum to hold the condensed
vapour from the top of the column so
that liquid (reflux) can be recycled back to the column.

Trays and plates:

Bubble cap trays
The tray is provided with holes, a riser or chimney is fitted over each hole, and a cap

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covers the riser. The vapour rise through the chimney and directed downward by the
cap, finally discharging through slots in the cap, and bubbling through the liquid on the
tray.

Valve trays
Perforations are covered by caps lifted by vapour,
which creates a flow area and directs the vapour
horizontally into the liquid.

Sieve trays
Sieve trays are simply metal plates with holes in them. Vapour
passes straight upward through the liquid on the plate. The
arrangement, number and size of the holes are design
parameters.

 Each tray has 2 conduits called downcomers: one on each side. Liquid falls by
gravity through the downcomers from one tray to the tray below.
 A weir ensures there is always some liquid on the tray.
 Vapour flows up and is forced to pass through the liquid on each tray.

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Packing

Packings are passive devices designed to increase the interfacial area for vapour-liquid
contact.

Basic operation:
•The feed is introduced somewhere near the middle of the column to a tray known as
the feed tray.
•The feed tray divides the column into a top (enriching or rectification) and a bottom
(stripping) section.
At the rectifying section, the more volatile component is removed through contacting the rising
vapour with the down-flowing liquid. At the stripping section, the down-flowing liquid is stripped
of the more volatile component by the rising vapour.
•The feed flows down the column where it is collected in the re-boiler.
•Heat (usually as steam) is supplied to the re-boiler to generate vapour.
•The vapour from the re-boiler is re‐introduced into the unit at the bottom of the
column.
•The liquid removed from the re-boiler is known as the bottoms product or simply,
bottoms.

•Vapour moves up the column, exits the top, and is cooled in a condenser. The
condensed liquid is stored in a holding vessel known as the reflux drum. Some of this
liquid is recycled back to the top of the column and this is called the reflux. The
condensed liquid that is removed from the system is known as the distillate or top
product.

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•Thus, there are internal flows of vapour and liquid within the column as well as
external flows of feeds and product streams, into and out of the column.

Crude distillation
The refining process is the separation of crude oil into various fractions or straight‐run
cuts by distillation in atmospheric and vacuum towers. The main fractions or "cuts"
obtained have specific boiling‐point ranges and can be classified in order of decreasing
volatility into gases, light distillates, middle distillates, gas oils, and residuum.
Atmospheric distillation:
Crude distillation unit (CDU) is also known as topping unit, or atmospheric distillation
unit. The unit produces raw products which have to be processed in downstream unit to
produce products of certain specifications. This involves the removal of undesirable
components like sulphur, nitrogen and metal compounds, and limiting the aromatic
contents.

Atmospheric Distillation Tower:

Crude oil contains salts which can be harmful to downstream equipment and must be
removed. To remove the salts, water is mixed with the crude oil and typically heated to
temperatures between about 215 oF to about 280 oF and allowed to separate in the de-
salter.
At the refinery, the desalted crude feedstock is preheated using recovered process heat
(heat exchangers network with hot products that need to be cooled).
Then, the preheated crude enters the furnace, where it is heated to about 340-372 oC.
The partially vaporized crude is fed into the feed region just above the bottom (called
flash zone) of the atmospheric column at pressures slightly above atmospheric, where
the vapor and liquid separate. The vapor includes all the components that comprise the
products, while the liquid is the residue with a small amount of components in the range

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of gas oil. These components are removed from the residue by steam stripping at the
bottom of the column.
All but the heaviest fractions flash into vapor. As the hot vapor rises in the tower, its
temperature is reduced. Heavy fuel oil or asphalt residue is taken from the bottom. At
successively higher points on the tower, the various major products including naphtha,
gasoline, kerosene, and uncondensed gases (which condense at lower temperatures)
are drawn off from the side of the column and side strippers are used to help controlling
the composition of light components.
The fractionating tower is a steel cylinder typically 50 m (164 ft) high and is equipped
with about 30–50 horizontal steel trays for separating and collecting the liquids. At each
tray, vapors from below enter perforations and bubble caps. The vapors bubble through
the liquid on the tray, causing some condensation at the temperature of that tray. An
overflow pipe drains the condensed liquids from each tray back to the tray below
(through down comer), where the higher temperature causes re-evaporation. The
evaporation and condensing operation is repeated many times until the desired degree
of product purity is reached. Then side streams from certain trays are taken off to
obtain the desired fractions. Products ranging from uncondensed gases at the top to
heavy fuel oils at the bottom can be taken continuously from the tower. Steam is often
used in towers. The distillation process separates the major constituents of crude oil
into so-called straight-run products. Crude oil is "topped" by distilling off only the lighter
fractions; the heavy residue is often distilled further under high vacuum.

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Atmospheric Distillation Unit

Streams taken directly from the distillation tower contain low boiling point components
and therefore they are pumped to the Stripping Tower to separate the light components
by distillation using steam, the stripped light components return to the distillation
tower as a reflux in a point above the point from which they were withdrawn.
The stripping tower is small and consists of a few trays (4-10); the steam enters at a
point below the bottom tray.
The objectives of stripping are:
1. To increase separation efficiency
2. To control the true boiling range
3. To obtain reflux inside the tower

Atmospheric Tower Products:

Typical products from the atmospheric distillation unit are:

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1. Gases
2. Light straight run naphtha (also called
light gasoline or light naphtha)
3. Heavy gasoline (also called military jet
fuel)
4. Kerosene (also called light distillate or
jet fuel)
5. Middle distillates called diesel or light
gas oil (LGO)
6. Heavy distillates called atmospheric
gas oil (AGO) or heavy gas oil (HGO)
7. Crude column bottoms called
atmospheric residue or reduced crude
(RC) or long residue.

Vacuum Distillation:

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To further distill the residuum or topped crude from the atmospheric distillation unit
without thermal cracking, reduced pressure is required. The process takes place in a
vacuum distillation unit. The atmospheric residue, the bottom from the atmospheric
distillation unit is sent to the vacuum distillation unit. The vacuum unit distillates are
light vacuum gas oil (LVGO), medium vacuum gas oil (MVGO), heavy vacuum gas oil
(HVGO), and vacuum residue.
The vacuum unit can also be used to produce lubrication oil grade feed stocks.
The principles of vacuum distillation are similar to those of atmospheric distillation
except that larger diameter columns are used to maintain vapor velocities at the
reduced pressures. The internal designs of some vacuum towers are different from
atmospheric towers in that random packing is used for fractionation instead of trays.
The atmospheric residue is heated in several exchangers by the hot products. Final
heating to 380–415 oC (716–779oF) is done in a fired heater. The feed enters the vacuum
tower at the lower part of the column.
The bottom zone is equipped with valve trays.
Vacuum distillation units have a system to create the vacuum in the column (25 – 40
mm Hg).

Process Description
The figure below shows the flow diagram of the vacuum distillation unit. The
atmospheric residue can be sent directly to the vacuum unit after heat extraction in the
crude pre-heat exchangers train. If it is sent to storage, the temperature should not be
below 150 oC (300 oF) to control the viscosity necessary for proper flow. It is then heated
in several exchangers by the hot products and pumparounds of the vacuum unit. Final
heating to 380–415 oC (716–779 oF) is done in a fired heater. To minimize thermal
cracking and coking, steam is injected in the heater tube passes. The feed enters the
vacuum tower at the lower part of the column. The distillate is withdrawn as LVGO and
two other cuts, MVGO and HVGO.
Vacuum distillation columns are equipped with packing for fractionation and heat
exchange zones. This is in order to reduce the pressure drop in the column which is
necessary for creating a low vacuum in the lower section of the column. The bottom
zone is equipped with valve trays. The vapours from the flash zone go through a wash
and fractionation zone where the heavy ends are condensed with HVGO reflux. Further
up, the column sections (consisting of a heat exchange and fractionation zone) are
separated by sprays of liquid from the pump around or the internal reflux.
Vacuum distillation units have a system to create the vacuum that uses either ejectors
or a combination of ejectors and liquid ring pumps. Ejectors recompress the gases
through a nozzle where vapours from the column are sucked into the venturi section of
the nozzle by a stream of medium or low pressure steam. The vapour phase at the

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ejector exit is partially condensed in an exchanger with cooling water. The liquid phase
is then sent to the overhead drum. The vapour phase goes from the condenser to
another ejector-condenser stage.
Liquid ring pumps are similar to rotor gas compressors. They do not use steam and can
significantly reduce hydrocarbon-rich aqueous condensates in a system using ejectors.
Systems with ejectors are much more flexible and rapid to put into operation. The
higher investments required by liquid ring pumps are offset by reduced steam
consumption and lower installation costs.

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