Refinery Consumption of Own Produced Fuels
Refinery Consumption of Own Produced Fuels
(OP)
I am interested in refinery consumption of own produced fuels. According to my literature review, these fuels include:
- Refinery fuel gas
- Propane liquids
- Butane liquids
- Middle distillates
- Heavy fuel oil
- Petroleum coke
My questions are as follows:
1. Did I miss any type of fuel in my list (above)?
2. Where does refinery own consumed fuel gas come from? A fluid catalytic cracking unit?
3. Where does refinery fuel gas get consumed within a refinery?
4. What determines the composition of refinery fuel gas?
5. Is there any useful literature or online resources discussing this topic?
I’d appreciate any help on this topic!
- Refinery fuel gas
- Propane liquids
- Butane liquids
- Middle distillates
- Heavy fuel oil
- Petroleum coke
My questions are as follows:
1. Did I miss any type of fuel in my list (above)?
2. Where does refinery own consumed fuel gas come from? A fluid catalytic cracking unit?
3. Where does refinery fuel gas get consumed within a refinery?
4. What determines the composition of refinery fuel gas?
5. Is there any useful literature or online resources discussing this topic?
I’d appreciate any help on this topic!





RE: Refinery Consumption of Own Produced Fuels
Fuel gas can be offgas from many different units e.g. reformers and is composed of mainly C1 and C2, plus H2 which you will want to recover before burning the rest. Composition is set by operating conditions of the unit where it comes from. Other than burning (which takes place in a furnace, a place to heat up a process stream) fuel gas, you can also use it to produce H2 in a steam reformer. A big advantage of fuel gas vs heavy fuel is environmental credits (cleanliness).
No two refinery fuel gas systems are the same since they are usually the product of many decennia of bright and not-so-bright ideas as to how to make the best of those "waste" streams. Hence I doubt if you could find much specific literature on fuel gas but maybe someone else could shine a brighter light on that.
RE: Refinery Consumption of Own Produced Fuels
Regards
Luis Marques
RE: Refinery Consumption of Own Produced Fuels
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RE: Refinery Consumption of Own Produced Fuels
I know it is hard to find some specific literature on this topic, and really appreciate more light regarding my questions.
RE: Refinery Consumption of Own Produced Fuels
Remember through this, that oil product sale = revenue, and fuel burned means you cannot sell it. Even low valued products can make a significant cash revenue, particularly today, so it is good to be energy efficient, and therefore it pays off to reduce fuel consumption.
RE: Refinery Consumption of Own Produced Fuels
By the way, I'd appreciate any help for providing sample data regarding fuel gas composition.
RE: Refinery Consumption of Own Produced Fuels
uregina.ca/ghgt7/PDF/papers/nonpeer/401.pdf.
Regards
Luis Marques
RE: Refinery Consumption of Own Produced Fuels
RE: Refinery Consumption of Own Produced Fuels
Refiners appear reluctant to invest in Residue desulphurisation, quite understandably since it is expensive.
This means that the marine industry is contemplating a future based on distillate fuels. A few years ago HFO was around $120-130 a ton and this week distillates briefly (Houston) topped $1000 a ton but unless the current high prices are sustained there will still be insufficient differential to justify low sulphur HFO.
This could mean that refiners will have to use more residue themselves (using flue gas desulphurisation) or convert the residues to other products.
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: Refinery Consumption of Own Produced Fuels
The furnaces were being augmented with lighter gas fuels but they eventually cut that out and ended up burning bunker only. The Hidalgo refinery claimed production increase from less than rated cap of 315k bbl/day to 330k/day a 4.7% increase in just 8 months chiefly attributed to using these cells. They reported less contaminating emissions and lower production fuel operating costs.
This year, these cells were installed at a plant I used to provide services on years ago in the early 90's and the current Oper.Mgr. there backs the claim...they burn no.6FO. The plant mgr says this company offered them to install and demonstrate and prove their claims with no upfront charges.
Has anyone any knowledge or experience at Pemex-Refinacion who can shed some light on this experience back in 1995- 1999 or later? Is there anything similar in refineries on our Gulf Coast? I'm originally from the Gulf (Mississippi Delta and NOLA while with GE I&SE) area but many, many years ago. Thanks
RE: Refinery Consumption of Own Produced Fuels
Can you be more specific about the "cells" (which I presume were the combustion catalyst(s) employed? Thanks!
Orenda
Orenda
RE: Refinery Consumption of Own Produced Fuels
All I know is what I read... that some Catalysis engineer from the Instituto de Petroleo who's life long job was to improve combustion of residual oils at Pemex hit the jackpot with lowering emissions and fuel consumption in the mid 90's. The process was tested from 1995 to 1998 and patented and supposedly a 5 year competition agreement held the technology off the commercial export market. I only found out about it this year after an IPP customer of mine installed the cells and reported significant savings in bunker fuel costs and lower emissions. They had the owners of the technology send me the daily operating data and I could find no errors. The steam plant had already decided to honor their contract and pay however, the equipment vendor also wanted to make sure the calculations were correct and he wasn't being shorted.
I've been investigating everywhere for any new developments like this to support the claims and cannot find anything. I saw an emissions before & after report from Pemex and I have this plant operations managers' word that it works. He says they are going to expand their use of these cells in other units.
Since catalysis is a science unto itself, and now there is "magnetochemical" engineering and quantum physics with "spin" -ning molecules, etc... I only trust what I see and what a few reliable friends tell me.
Refinery areas are where most of this stuff comes from so here I am looking for further info. But I have to say, I cannot imgagine refineries nor IPP's letting some profits slip away...so from that aspect alone I'm interested and it has my full attention one way or the other, especially for some of the oil fired plants I know in developing countries who need to reduce emissions and fuel operating costs. I usually concentrate on efficiency improvements to steam paths. The closest to combustion technologies I ever got were gas turbines. I read in this years McGraw-Hill Power gen handbook that "catalytic combustion" is the future...what I want to know is if the future is here already.
RE: Refinery Consumption of Own Produced Fuels
the only thing is that whereas you and I would invest in something proven to save money, the surprise is how difficult it is to get the money approved even with a payback of less than one year.
Many operations do indeed let profits slip away and they do it as a matter of routine.
It sometimes takes a good excuse to get the money spent such as EPA action, Health and safety etc anything with a good chance of a big fine or a jail sentence and even then, we see people going to jail when they should have known better.
Maybe I'm just a cynic.....
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: Refinery Consumption of Own Produced Fuels
I've checked further... this company asks for specific data, they design the cells, buy materials and fabricate the cells, ship to site, send a crew over to install on the air side and the plant is responsible to install on the supply line FROM the storage tanks to the Day Tank under technical advice... NO COST UPFRONT. The cell on the oil supply line from the storage tank to the day tank has no affect on operation if the Day Tank is filled prior to installation. The air side installation is on the individual burners, one at a time, so no shutdown is required...unless the system by design requires one big cell on the forced draft supply. The contract is purely PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT of the furnace/boiler from Chromatographic combustion gas testing and fuel consumption comparisons of before and after...NO MONEY UPFRONT and low risk, no improvement no charge. I checked and understand they have a successful history and no reports of any failures or quality problems. If you reduce your electric bill at home with a new technology by $50, and you only have to pay $25 for the improvement, you reduced your electric bill $25 at no cost...that is the deal this IPP has and they paid nothing for the installation. So I asked why isn't this "out there" already and the answer was that the Pemex-Refinacion had it sewn up with an agreement for its own use so many years before commercialization. That is why this IPP just now has it this year. Something to look at seriously.
RE: Refinery Consumption of Own Produced Fuels
John
RE: Refinery Consumption of Own Produced Fuels
Now, I've started another topic regarding GHG & CAC emissions coefficients of refinery fuel gas combustion simulation.
If you are interested, please go to http://www
RE: Refinery Consumption of Own Produced Fuels
I can wholly understand the pemex point of view but not the IPP, as in "Independent Power Producer" using this and paying possibly 50-100k / month in "fuel savings" on a little 60mw unit???
RE: Refinery Consumption of Own Produced Fuels