Petroleum Refining Engineering

Dr. TVN. Padmesh

Week 1

What Goes On In
An Oil Refinery

Agenda
Introduction
What is Crude Oil
Oil and Gas
Formation of Oil and Gas
How Do You Get from Crude Oil to
Products?

Separations
Chemical Reactions

cont...

Agenda - Cont.

How Do You Get from Crude Oil to

Products?

Separations
Chemical Reactions
Major Equipment
Minimizing Pollution

What do The Chemical Engineers Do?

Introduction

Introduction
Energy vital Industrial and economic
development
Petroleum foundation of Industrial civilization
Occurrence of crude oil with gas
Contrary gas Without oil
Oil/gas varying proportions - gas/oil ratio
chemical and physical properties.

Oil and Gas

Naturally occurring chemicals that are made
up of just two elements
Carbon & Hydrogen.
The class of chemicals based on carbon and
hydrogen are called hydrocarbons.

Oil and Gas

Simplest hydrocarbon - Methane, CH4.
Other hydrocarbons like
octane and octadecane have
more complicated
structures.
Plastics are made of
molecules called polymers
that are very long chains of
hydrocarbons.

Formation of Oil and Gas

Two theories:
Inorganic theory action of water on metallic
carbides/atm radioactivity/cosmic radiation
Organic theory decomposing of Plants and
animals (algae, fungi, diatoms and
foraminifera)
Mesozoic (225 millions), Cainozoic (65 millions)
Predicts minimal reservoirs but more oil.

Formation of Oil and Gas

Organic theory

Erosion of rocks and sands,

Temperature and pressure
Aerobic bacteria acts as scavengers
Such complex transformation facilitated forming
fats, amino acids, lipids, and finally OIL and GAS.

Oil and Gas Exploration

Hydrocarbon exploration (or oil and gas
exploration) hunt for hydrocarbons
by petroleum geologists and geophysicists.
Analysis of soil, water, rocks geochemcial
prospecting.

Oil and Gas Exploration

Types of Exploration
Gravity survey - gravimeter
Magnetic survey - magnetometer
Passive seismic - seismometers
or
Regional seismic reflection surveys

What Is Crude Oil?

Crude Oil is a liquid mixture of thousands
of organic chemicals found underground.
It is the result of organic matter decaying
over thousands of years; hence the name
fossil fuel
Crude oil is found all over the world and
varies tremendously in its density,
aromatics, sulfur, and metals content

Classification of Crude oil

Paraffins(CnH2n+2) saturated hydrocarbons with straight or

branched chains, but without any ring structure.
Cycloparaffins (CnH2n) (naphthenes), saturated hydrocarbons
containing one or more rings, each of which may have one or
more paraffin side-chains (also known as alicyclic
hydrocarbons).
Aromatics(CnH2n-6) i.e, hydrocarbons containing one or more
aromatic nuclei such as benzene, naphthalene, and phenanthrene
ring systems that may be linked up with (substituted)
naphthalene rings or paraffin side-chains.

Properties of crude oil

Color:
Light brown to dark brown
Sp.gr:
0.810.985
Boiling range : 25 400oC
Hydrocarbons C1- C70 (4000 compounds)

Metals:

V, Fe, Ni, S

(H2S,Thiols (mercaptans), sulfides, di sulfides, poly sulfides and thiophenes).

Cause corrosion of equipments, bad odour in products, catalyst poisoning, Air pollution.

N Indols, pyridines and quinolenes (Difficult to remove).

Oxygen compounds: Present as naphthenic acids and phenols
Are corrosive in nature and cause odour.
Metal: Act as catalyst poisons
Crude composition
C: 84-87%,H: 11-14%,S: 0-5%,N: 0-1%,O: 0-2%.

Refinery Operation
Subdivision of Petroleum and Similar Materials into Various Subgroups
Natural Materials

Derived Materials

Manufactured
Materials

Natural Gas

Saturates

Synthetic Crude Oil

Petroleum

Aromatics

Distillates

Heavy Oil

Resins

Lubricating Oils

Bitumena
Asphaltite
Asphaltoid

Asphaltenes
Carbenesb
Carboidsb

Wax
Residuum
Asphalt

Ozocerite(Natural Wax)

Coke

Kerogen
Coal

Tar
Pitch

Crude oil is transported to refineries by pipelines, (more than

500,000 barrels per day), or by ocean-going tankers.
The basic refinery process is distillation, which separates the
crude oil into fractions of differing volatility.
After the distillation, other physical methods are employed to
separate the mixtures including absorption, adsorption, solvent
extraction and crystallization.
After physical separation into such constituents as light and
heavy naphtha, kerosene, light and heavy gas oils selected
petroleum fractions may be subjected to conversion processes
such as thermal cracking (i.e., coking;) and catalytic cracking.

Cracking breaks the large molecules of heavier gas oils

into the smaller molecules that form the lighter, more
valuable naphtha fractions.
Reforming changes the structure of straight-chain
paraffin molecules into branched-chain iso-paraffins
and ring-shaped aromatics. The process is widely used
to raise the octane number of gasoline obtained by
distillation of paraffinic crude oils.

Down stream Process

Products

Distillation and processing

Fuel gas
Petrol
LPG (domestic gas)
Naphtha
Kerosene
Diesel
Fuel Oil
Lubricants
Waxes and
Petroleum coke