Session three of IRPC focused on sustainability. To open the session, Arun Arora and Malini Warrer from Chevron Lummus Global and Vinod Ramaseshan from Saudi Aramco delivered a presentation titled, “Heavy Oil Processing Initiative Combining Incremental Crude Processing and Enhanced Residue Upgradation at Low Cost and Energy.”
This final installment of the History of the HPI series details major events in the refining and petrochemicals industry over the past 20 yr, including stricter regulations/initiatives to curb carbon emissions, a safer and more environmentally friendly way to produce and handle chemicals, significant capital investments to boost production capacity and digital transformation.
Much like several initiatives passed in the 1970s and 1980s, the 1990s were a decade heavily focused on environmental issues, with many new regulations being enacted to not only mitigate industrial and vehicle emissions but also to advance the production of clean fuels globally.
The efficient operation of crude oil distillation units (CDUs) improves profits and distillate yield while optimizing production costs and reliability. Simultaneously, it is possible to reduce caustic use, positively impacting downstream sodium impact resulting in increased fluidized catalytic cracking (FCC) catalyst costs, coker furnace fouling and other issues.
Several major impactful events took place in the global oil and gas and petrochemical industries in the 1980s.
As resources become scarcer, and as costs continue to rise, companies are looking for new methods to reduce their material feedstock costs and remain competitive.
Distillation towers consume ~30% of the energy in a refinery or petrochemical facility. The reboiler is the stomach of the distillation tower that consumes the energy to separate the components.
Corrosion is one of the most important challenges that refineries face (FIG. 1).1
The following is a mixture of technical articles, columns and headlines published in the 1950s by Petroleum Refiner, the forerunner to Hydrocarbon Processing.