December 2017
Columns
Refining: What is blending?
Not a day passes without publications, the blogosphere and pundits wringing their hands over the concept of fuel blending. In today’s low-priced crude oil market, the fuel blending business gives blenders a competitive edge that grows every day, attracting new customers and potential new producers intrigued by the possibility of making “easy” money.
The Author
Lee Eliseo Curcio is a Chemical Engineer, Vice President and CFO at Refinery Automation Institute (RAI). As a blending and optimization specialist, he has worked with RAI for the past 6 yr in the areas of gasoline, diesel and bunker blending, ethanol nonlinear property correlations and octane boost, and naphtha and butane blending. He also teaches the gasoline, diesel and bunker blending optimization section of RAI’s blending public course. As a manager, he is responsible for growing the business, acquiring new customers and managing company cashflow. He worked previously at Catholic University of Louvain in advanced modeling and optimization. He holds BS and MS degrees in chemical engineering with high honors from the University of Calabria in Italy.
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