More on Refining

Crude Oil Provides Tools to Color Our World
We know that fuels and products derived from crude oil power our automobiles.  Some people are not quite as aware of the fact that oil becomes jet fuel, home heating oil, kerosene, and lubricants. And many people rarely consider oil’s thousands of other uses in modern life.  Oil is the building block for plastics, which become the housings of computer monitors, hard drives, keyboards, telephones, televisions, radios, and appliances, plastic bumpers in most automobiles, product packaging and just about everything else we see and touch in our daily lives.  But that’s really only the beginning of the story. 

Oil is also key to the production of synthetic fibers—therefore much of the clothing we wear—and of course plastics comprise most of the toys our children play with … including crayons.  In all these ways, both literally and figuratively, crude oil colors our world.

It’s at the refinery where the magic happens, where crude oil is purified and distilled into its many bases.  New refining processes and approaches are resulting in cleaner air, less waste, and far greater efficiency.

Gasoline
Gasoline fuels our vehicles so we can get where we need to go.  In the past, we paid a price for this privilege.  Back in the 1920s, a researcher working for an automobile manufacturer found that adding a lead compound (tetraethyl lead) to gasoline eliminated engine knock—the rattling sound common in poorly performing engines.  Lead was added to gasoline for 50 years, until irrefutable evidence proved that lead in the air from auto emissions was detrimental to the environment (1)

Removal of lead from gasoline during the refining process began in the 1970s in response to passage of the 1970 Clean Air Act by the U.S. Congress.  The first unleaded gasoline, and the first catalytic converter, appeared in 1975.  The task of removing lead from gasoline proved to be massive in scope and yet extremely worthwhile, as shown by 30 years of test data.  In 1970, 220,869 short tons of lead were emitted to the air in the U.S., most of it by automobiles.  That number was reduced by 66 percent in 1980, by 97% in 1990, and by 98% in 2000.  Indeed, the radical reduction in vehicle emissions over the last years shows what human ingenuity can do.  Although the number of U.S. citizens and automobiles has grown dramatically since 1970, air quality has also improved by as much as 41 percent nationwide.

The Clean Air Act also targeted other air pollutants:  carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, volatile organic compounds, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter, and directly emitted particulate matter. Today, U.S. refineries mix and deliver a full range of gasoline fuels that help reduce vehicle emissions. Special reformulated gasoline mixtures  are designed for specific areas of the country where the levels of various pollutants are high.

These cleaner-burning fuels are improving the quality of life for Americans while significantly reducing pollution levels.

Refineries are currently working to reduce sulfur in gasoline and diesel fuel, and also to address concerns about the additive MTBE.  As air quality continues to improve, the oil and natural gas industry is meeting the challenge to produce ever-more-pure gasoline products while ensuring a constant, reliable supply of low-cost gasoline.

Up with Efficiency, Down with Waste!
The U.S. Department of Energy calls refineries “marvels of modern engineering.”  However, the basic goal of refining operations is the removal of impurities, which generates waste.  To lessen effects that wastes may have on the environment, refiners are taking aggressive action to reduce waste, to increase recycling and energy recovery, and to ensure the integrity of the communities in which they operate.

For example, in 1987, the ChevronTexaco Pascagoula Refinery became a leading participant in a corporation-wide effort to reduce toxic emissions and their accompanying cleanup costs.  The voluntary SMART Program (Save Money and Reduce Toxics) became an industry benchmark that earned national praise.  ChevronTexaco Pascagoula continues to be an industry leader in aggressive actions to reduce waste. Among the refinery’s significant accomplishments:

• A 37 percent decrease in Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) emissions since 1988;
• An 81 percent reduction in carcinogenic emissions since 1988, due in large part to the recovery and recycling of nickel byproducts;
• A 47 percent decrease in the generation of hazardous waste since 1991;
• The recycling of 800,000 barrels of oil recovered from process water;
• The recycling of 150 billion gallons of cooling water;
• The treatment of 250 million gallons of sour process water, which netted 15,000 tons of ammonia and 341,000 tons of sulfur for sale to fertilizer manufacturers; and
• The recycling of 6,000 tons of spent catalyst through metallurgical smelters; recovered metals were forwarded to the steel and copper industries.

In 1998, the BP Oil Toledo Refinery earned the Governor’s Pollution Prevention Award for installing flare flow meters to reduce emissions at the facility (4). The benefits of this action included: 

• A reduction of carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas) and criteria air pollutant emissions of more than 5,500 tons per year;
• A savings of more than $4,000 per day in reduced raw product losses; and
• Implementation of a system to identify the quantity and source of emissions, enabling operators to change source units and recover more usable product.

In 1999, the Conoco Denver Refinery Energy Action Team established an overall goal of increasing energy efficiency at the facility along with 24 other pollution- and efficiency-related goals.  The team set a 1.5-percent reduction in energy use goal for 2000, and an additional 3 percent by 2004.  So far, notable Conoco Denver successes include:

• A 165-ton reduction in VOC emissions to help the Denver area meet summer ozone air quality targets;
• Creation of a process to clean and reuse spent carbon filters instead of discarding them as waste;
• Implementation of a wastewater stream recycling process; and
• Capturing of most refinery gases in a central fuel gas system where sulfur is removed and the remaining gas then serves as the facility’s fired-gas supply.

According to the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, by the late 1990s U.S. refineries were recycling more than 60 percent of the hazardous and non-hazardous wastes they created.  One amazing aspect of the industry recycling effort involves power cogeneration, or using excess energy generated in normal operations to create additional power.  For example, a 102-megawatt, $100-million cogeneration power plant is being added to the Valero refinery in Benecia, California.  The new Valero facility will feature two combustion turbine generators capable of producing enough electricity to run the refinery.  Gas byproduct will fuel the turbines, which in turn will produce steam for use in refinery processes, allowing three older boilers to be retired.

Despite the ever higher rate of efficiency in modern refineries, fugitive emissions—leaks in valves, pumps, flanges, and other joints within the refinery system—remain an ongoing concern and the focus of industry studies.  These emissions are identified by leak detection equipment that is being revolutionized through application of gas imaging technology. Such advanced equipment can help refineries capture fugitive emissions faster, easier, and at less expense.  Inspections using this new technology, now in the testing phase, can be performed more frequently, allowing plants to identify leaking equipment and reclaim more lost resources.  Soon it will be as simple as a refinery worker hand-carrying an infrared laser, attached to an advanced imaging system that pinpoints unwanted emissions and displays them on a video monitor.

From becoming self-reliant producers and users of energy to self-policing pollution fighters, the refineries of today and tomorrow are redefining what it means to be “marvels of modern engineering” as they convert crude oil into products that make the American way of life possible.
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1 The API Toxics Release Inventory Report - 2009