Petroleum products and a refinery configuration

This chapter defines the major products normally produced from the refining of crude oil. These products are the intermediary and finished products from energy refineries only. Chapter 1 of this book provided brief description of the products, this chapter expands on this with a more in-depth look at the products themselves. Their demand in the petroleum markets and also the environmental impact of the more prominent products are discussed in this chapter. Finally the chapter continues with an example of the development of a process configuration of the refinery to meet a particular product slate.

The first part of this chapter describes the basic fractions obtained from the atmospheric and vacuum crude distillation units. It continues with the description of products from the most common intermediate processes met with in many refineries to meet their various product requirements. This part of the chapter continues with an outline of the specifications for various finished petroleum products and discusses their salient points.

The second part of the chapter discusses the features of the motive fuels. It continues with the effect of environmental constraints and the development of changes in the content of these products.

The third part describes the development of a refinery’s process configuration and discusses its purpose. The development of a refinery configuration is illustrated by an example. This example is compiled manually. In modern development practice however this would be accomplished by reducing the various product properties and their relationship to linear equations and solving these with high speed computers, a process called Linear Programming.