(52c) Petrochemicals from Bitumen

Integration of olefins and butadiene production with petroleum refining operation is not a new concept. However, integration of olefins production with bitumen upgrading / refining is a new concept which has recently been developed as a study. The study was for the government of Alberta Hydrocarbon Upgrading Task Force (HUTF) which includes industry sponsors such as Dow and Nova - major ethylene producers in the province of Alberta.

The overall concept is upgrading of high sulfur, hydrogen deficient, bitumen from Northern Alberta. This is assumed to be processed in the Edmonton area, to produce fuel products: diesel, kerosene and gasoline. These fuels are produced by conventional refining and conversion processing. Hydrogen, mainly for the various hydroprocessing units, is produced by gasification of petroleum coke.

The economics of the fuel products is greatly enhanced by integrated production of olefins, pyrolysis gasoline and butadiene by steam cracking from advantageous feed streams. These are co-products from the refining conversion units and therefore substantially improve the overall economics of the proposed complex.

The entire complex is driven by electric power, produced by combustion of low value solid fuels in fluidized bed boilers. Incremental energy is supplied by coal. The gasification of coke is integrated with the coal fired steam generators. This energy integration is unique in that all of the major compressors are driven by electricity and all of the high pressure steam goes to a central power island. Since the incremental energy is coal derived ($0.75 per million BTU cost), the economical approach temperature for the cross exchangers is larger which also results in lower capital.

The two most positive attributes to the overall economics are: 1. Bitumen is valued at only 40% on a volume basis (35% on weight basis) of West Texas Intermediate crude. 2. Almost 25% reduction in capital investment resulted from integrated production of petrochemicals, hydrogen and electric power as opposed to the traditional stand alone upgrading/refining and power units.

Given all the above, with appropriate (conservative) contingency and escalation, the projected ROI is over 20% per year after Canadian federal and provincial taxes The paper presents the overall flow scheme and the rationale for selection of the major processing routes. Conceptual economics are presented, and several alternative scenarios are discussed in arriving at the overall complex configuration.