(67f) Building a Grassroot Refinery in the 21st Century: Which Way to Go?

Petroleum refining is a capital-intensive business. With the stringent environmental regulation on the process industry, political instability and declining refining margins, higher pressures are exerted on the refining industry. This led to misbalance in the refining capacity growth during the last twenty years. The last grass root refinery was built in the USA was about thirty years ago. In addition, the number of USA refineries shrunk by 40 refineries in 8 years. Moreover, with the increased risk of war and terrorist attacks, refineries and fuel transportations grids are targeted since they supply fuels to essential nodes such as power plants and war efforts which is another constraint on the refining business requiring increased expenditure on safety and security. With the substantial increase in world demand for oil and refined products, the need for refining capacity had changed much during the last a few years. In addition, many of the world refineries will not be able to meet the new stringent product specs in Europe and USA. This work covers the important aspects to take into consideration when deciding to build a new refinery or expanding an existing one including the markets, the crudes used products slate, complexity desired, availability factor, and other economical and financial factors. Case studies were done on several refineries models serving different markets with different products needs. Simulation runs were done using ASPEN PIMS utilizing nonlinear techniques to solve the optimization problem. The results addressed the benefits of processing heavy crudes to utilize the spread between the light and n heavy crudes. It also addressed how exporting high spec products can be more profitable than tailoring the refinery for domestic use even if the products were to be sold domestically at international prices and what needed to be done in order to accomplish that. In addition, the results showed tendency towards more dieselization in expense of gasoline production. The model also covers the problem of controlling benzene content in the gasoline product.