Oil refinery

An oil refinery or petroleum refinery:

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Is an industrial process plant where crude oil is transformed and refined into more
useful products such as petroleum naphtha, gasoline, diesel fuel, asphalt base,
heating oil, kerosene, liquefied petroleum gas, jet fuel and fuel oils.
●
Petrochemicals feed stock like ethylene and propylene can also be produced
directly by cracking crude oil without the need of using refined products of crude oil
such as naphtha.
●
Oil refineries are typically large, sprawling industrial complexes with extensive piping
running throughout, carrying streams of fluids between large chemical processing
units, such as distillation columns. In many ways, oil refineries use much of the
technology, and can be thought of, as types of chemical plants.

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Oil refinery

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 Oil refinery
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An oil refinery is considered an essential part of the
downstream side of the petroleum industry.
●
Some modern petroleum refineries process as much as
800,000 to 900,000 barrels (127,000 to 143,000 cubic
meters) of crude oil per day.
●
According to the Oil and Gas Journal in the world a total of
636 refineries were operated on the 31 December 2014 for
a total capacity of 87.75 million barrels (13,951,000 m3).

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 history
History:
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The Chinese were among the first civilizations to refine oil. As early as the first century, the
Chinese were refining crude oil for use as an energy source. Between 512 and 518, in the late
Northern Wei Dynasty, the Chinese geographer, writer and politician Li Daoyuan introduced the
process of refining oil into various lubricants in his famous work Commentary on the Water Classic.
●
Crude oil was often distilled by Arab chemists, with clear descriptions given in Arabic handbooks
such as those of Muhammad ibn Zakarīya Rāzi (854–925). The streets of Baghdad were paved with
tar, derived from petroleum that became accessible from natural fields in the region.
●
Prior to the nineteenth century, petroleum was known and utilized in various fashions in Babylon,
Egypt, China, Philippines, Rome and Azerbaijan.
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In North America, the first oil well was drilled in 1858 by James Miller Williams in Oil Springs,
Ontario, Canada.

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 history
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In North America, the first oil well was drilled in 1858 by James Miller Williams in Oil Springs,
Ontario, Canada.
●
Samuel Kier established America's first oil refinery in Pittsburgh on Seventh avenue near
Grant Street, in 1853.
●
At one point, the refinery in Ras Tanura, Saudi Arabia was claimed to be the largest oil
refinery in the world. For most of the 20th century, the largest refinery was the Abadan
Refinery in Iran.
●
Prior to World War II in the early 1940s, most petroleum refineries in the United States
consisted simply of crude oil distillation units (often referred to as atmospheric crude oil
distillation units).
●
Some refineries also had vacuum distillation units as well as thermal cracking units such as
visbreakers (viscosity breakers, units to lower the viscosity of the oil).

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 Oil refinery/operation
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In the 19th century, refineries in the U.S. processed crude oil primarily to recover the
kerosene. There was no market for the more volatile fraction, including gasoline,
which was considered waste and was often dumped directly into the nearest river.
●
Raw or unprocessed crude oil is not generally useful in industrial applications,
although "light, sweet" (low viscosity, low sulfur) crude oil has been used directly as
a burner fuel to produce steam for the propulsion of seagoing vessels. The lighter
elements, however, form explosive vapors in the fuel tanks and are therefore
hazardous, especially in warships. Instead, the hundreds of different hydrocarbon
molecules in crude oil are separated in a refinery into components that can be used
as fuels, lubricants, and feedstocks in petrochemical processes that manufacture
such products as plastics, detergents, solvents, elastomers, and fibers such as
nylon and polyesters.

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 Oil refinery/introduction
Introduction.
Petroleum refining begins with the distillation, or fractionation, of crude oils into
separate hydrocarbon groups.
●
The resultant products are directly related to the characteristics of the crude
processed. Most distillation products are further converted into more usable products
by changing the size and structure of the hydrocarbon molecules through cracking,
reforming, and other conversion processes as discussed in this chapter.
●
These converted products are then subjected to various treatment and separation
processes such as extraction, hydrotreating, and sweetening to remove undesirable
constituents and improve product quality. Integrated refineries incorporate
fractionation, conversion, treatment, and blending operations and may also include
petrochemical processing.

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Distillation column

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Fractional column

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 Oil refinery/introduction
Refining Operations.
Petroleum refining processes and operations can be separated into five basic areas:
1)Fractionation (distillation):
Is the separation of crude oil in atmospheric and vacuum distillation towers into groups
of hydrocarbon compounds of differing boiling-point ranges called "fractions" or "cuts."
2)Conversion processes change the size and/or structure of hydrocarbon molecules.
These processes include:
I. Decomposition (dividing) by thermal and catalytic cracking;
II. Unification (combining) through alkylation and polymerization; and
III.Alteration (rearranging) with isomerization and catalytic reforming.
3)Treatment processes are intended to prepare hydrocarbon streams for additional
processing and to prepare finished products. Treatment may include the removal or
separation of aromatics and naphthenes as well as impurities and undesirable
contaminants. Treatment may involve chemical or physical separation such as
dissolving, absorption, or precipitation using a variety and combination of processes
including desalting, drying, hydrodesulfurizing, solvent refining, sweetening, solvent
extraction, and solvent dewaxing.
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 Oil refinery/introduction
Contd,
Treatment may involve chemical or physical separation such as dissolving, absorption, or
precipitation using a variety and combination of processes including desalting, drying,
hydrodesulfurizing, solvent refining, sweetening, solvent extraction, and solvent dewaxing.

4)Formulating and Blending is the process of mixing and combining hydrocarbon

fractions, additives, and other components to produce finished products with specific
performance properties.
5)Other Refining Operations include: light-ends recovery; sour-water stripping; solid
waste and wastewater treatment; process-water treatment and cooling; storage and
handling; product movement; hydrogen production; acid and tail-gas treatment; and sulfur
recovery.

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 Oil refinery
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Petroleum fossil fuels are burned in internal combustion
engines to provide power for ships, automobiles, aircraft
engines, lawn mowers, dirt bikes, and other machines.
●
Different boiling points allow the hydrocarbons to be
separated by distillation. Since the lighter liquid products are
in great demand for use in internal combustion engines, a
modern refinery will convert heavy hydrocarbons and lighter
gaseous elements into these higher value products.

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 Oil refinery/operation
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Oil can be used in a variety of ways because it contains hydrocarbons of
varying molecular masses, forms and lengths such as paraffins, aromatics,
naphthenes (or cycloalkanes), alkenes, dienes, and alkynes.
●
While the molecules in crude oil include different atoms such as sulfur and
nitrogen, the hydrocarbons are the most common form of molecules, which
are molecules of varying lengths and complexity made of hydrogen and
carbon atoms, and a small number of oxygen atoms.
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The differences in the structure of these molecules account for their varying
physical and chemical properties, and it is this variety that makes crude oil
useful in a broad range of several applications.

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 Major products
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Petroleum products are materials derived from crude oil (petroleum) as it is
processed in oil refineries.
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The majority of petroleum is converted to petroleum products, which includes several
classes of fuels.
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Oil refineries also produce various intermediate products such as hydrogen, light
hydrocarbons, reformate and pyrolysis gasoline.
●
These are not usually transported but instead are blended or processed further on-
site. Chemical plants are thus often adjacent to oil refineries or a number of further
chemical processes are integrated into it.
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For example, light hydrocarbons are steam-cracked in an ethylene plant, and the
produced ethylene is polymerized to produce polyethene

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 Major products
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Because technical reasons and environment protection demand a
very low sulfur content in all but the heaviest products, it is
transformed to hydrogen sulfide via catalytic hydrodesulfurization and
removed from the product stream via amine gas treating. Using the
Claus process, hydrogen sulfide is afterwards transformed to
elementary sulfur to be sold to the chemical industry.
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Rather large heat energy freed by this process is directly used in the
other parts of the refinery. Often an electrical power plant is
combined into the whole refinery process to take up the excess heat.

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 Oil refinery/products
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According to the composition of the crude oil and depending on the demands of the market,
refineries can produce different shares of petroleum products.
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The largest share of oil products is used as "energy carriers", i.e. various grades of fuel oil and
gasoline.
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These fuels include or can be blended to give gasoline, jet fuel, diesel fuel, heating oil, and heavier
fuel oils. Heavier (less volatile) fractions can also be used to produce asphalt, tar, paraffin wax,
lubricating and other heavy oils.
●
Refineries also produce other chemicals, some of which are used in chemical processes to produce
plastics and other useful materials. Since petroleum often contains a few percent sulfur-containing
molecules, elemental sulfur is also often produced as a petroleum product. Carbon, in the form of
petroleum coke, and hydrogen may also be produced as petroleum products.
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The hydrogen produced is often used as an intermediate product for other oil refinery processes
such as hydrocracking and hydrodesulfurization.

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 Oil refinery/categories
Petroleum products are usually grouped into four categories:
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Light distillates (LPG, gasoline, naphtha),
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Middle distillates (kerosene, jet fuel, diesel),
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Heavy distillates and
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Residuum (heavy fuel oil, lubricating oils, wax, asphalt).
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These require blending various feedstocks, mixing appropriate additives, providing
short term storage, and preparation for bulk loading to trucks, barges, product ships,
and railcars.
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This classification is based on the way crude oil is distilled and separated into
fractions.

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 classification
classification is based on the way crude oil is distilled and separated into fractions .
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Gaseous fuel such as Liquified petroleum gas and propane, stored and shipped in liquid form under pressure.
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Lubricants (produces light machine oils, motor oils, and greases, adding viscosity stabilizers as required),
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Paraffin wax, used in the packaging of frozen foods, among others. May be shipped in bulk to a site to prepare as packaged
blocks. Used for wax emulsions, construction board, matches, candles, rust protection, and vapor barriers.
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Sulfur (or sulfuric acid), byproducts of sulfur removal from petroleum which may have up to a couple percent sulfur as organic
sulfur-containing compounds. Sulfur and sulfuric acid are useful industrial materials. Sulfuric acid is usually prepared and
shipped as the acid precursor oleum.
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Bulk tar shipping for offsite unit packaging for use in tar-and-gravel roofing.
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Asphalt used as a binder for gravel to form asphalt concrete, which is used for paving roads, lots, etc.
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Petroleum coke, used in specialty carbon products like electrodes or as solid fuel.
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Petrochemicals are organic compounds that are the ingredients for the chemical industry, ranging from polymers and
pharmaceuticals, including ethylene and benzene-toluene-xylenes ("BTX") which are often sent to petrochemical plants for
further processing in a variety of ways. The petrochemicals may be olefins or their precursors, or various types of aromatic
petrochemicals

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 Process units
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Desalter unit:
Washes out salt from the crude oil before it enters the atmospheric distillation unit.
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Crude Oil Distillation unit (Atmospheric distillation):
Distills the incoming crude oil into various fractions for further processing in other units.
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Vacuum distillation unit:
Further distills the residue oil from the bottom of the crude oil distillation unit. The
vacuum distillation is performed at a pressure well below atmospheric pressure.
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Naphtha hydrotreater unit:
Uses hydrogen to desulfurize naphtha from atmospheric distillation. Must hydrotreat the
naphtha before sending to a catalytic reformer unit.

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 classification
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Catalytic reformer:
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converts the desulfurized naphtha molecules into higher-octane
molecules to produce reformate (reformer product).
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The reformate has higher content of aromatics and cyclic
hydrocarbons which is a component of the end-product gasoline or
petrol.
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An important byproduct of a reformer is hydrogen released during
the catalyst reaction. The hydrogen is used either in the
hydrotreaters or the hydrocracker.

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 classification
Distillate hydrotreater:
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Desulfurizes distillates:
(such as diesel) after atmospheric distillation. Uses hydrogen to desulfurize the naphtha fraction from
the crude oil distillation or other units within the refinery.
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Fluid Catalytic Cracker (FCC):
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Upgrades the heavier, higher-boiling fractions from the crude oil distillation by converting them into
lighter and lower boiling, more valuable products.
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Hydrocracker:
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Uses hydrogen to upgrade heavy residual oils from the vacuum distillation unit by thermally cracking
them into lighter, more valuable reduced viscosity products.
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Merox desulfurize LPG:
kerosene or jet fuel by oxidizing mercaptans to organic disulfides.

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 process
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Alternative processes:
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For removing mercaptans are known, e.g. doctor sweetening process and caustic
washing.
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Coking units (delayed coking, fluid coker, and flexicoker):
Process very heavy residual oils into gasoline and diesel fuel, leaving petroleum
coke as a residual product.
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Alkylation unit:
Uses sulfuric acid or hydrofluoric acid to produce high-octane components for
gasoline blending. Converts isobutane and butylenes into alkylate, which is a very
high-octane component of the end-product gasoline or petrol.

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 classification
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Dimerization unit:
Converts olefins into higher-octane gasoline blending components. For example, butenes can be
dimerized into isooctene which may subsequently be hydrogenated to form isooctane. There are
also other uses for dimerization. Gasoline produced through dimerization is highly unsaturated and
very reactive. It tends spontaneously to form gums. For this reason the effluent from the
dimerization need to be blended into the finished gasoline pool immediately or hydrogenated.
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Isomerization:
Converts linear molecules such as normal pentane to higher-octane branched molecules for
blending into gasoline or feed to alkylation units. Also used to convert linear normal butane into
isobutane for use in the alkylation unit.
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Steam reforming:
Converts natural gas into hydrogen for the hydrotreaters and/or the hydrocracker.

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 classification
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Amine gas treater, Claus unit, and tail gas treatment:
Convert hydrogen sulfide from hydrodesulfurization into elemental sulfur. The large
majority of the 64,000,000 metric tons of sulfur produced worldwide in 2005 was
byproduct sulfur from petroleum refining and natural gas processing plants.
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Sour water stripper:
Uses steam to remove hydrogen sulfide gas from various wastewater streams for
subsequent conversion into end-product sulfur in the Claus unit.
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Cooling towers:
Circulate cooling water, boiler plants generates steam for steam generators, and
instrument air systems include pneumatically operated control valves and an electrical
substation.

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 classification
●
Wastewater collection and treating systems:
Consist of API separators, dissolved air flotation (DAF) units and further treatment units such as
an activated sludge biotreater to make water suitable for reuse or for disposal.
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Solvent refining:
Use solvent such as cresol or furfural to remove unwanted, mainly aromatics from lubricating oil
stock or diesel stock.
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Solvent dewaxing:
Remove the heavy waxy constituents petrolatum from vacuum distillation products.
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Liquified gas (LPG) storage vessels:
For propane and similar gaseous fuels at a pressure sufficient to maintain them in liquid form.
These are usually spherical vessels or bullets (horizontal vessels with rounded ends.

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 Auxiliary units
Auxiliary operations and facilities include:
steam and power generation; process and fire water systems; flares and relief systems;
furnaces and heaters; pumps and valves; supply of steam, air, nitrogen, and other plant
gases; alarms and sensors; noise and pollution controls; sampling, testing, and inspecting;
and laboratory, control room, maintenance, and administrative facilities.
1)Heat Exchangers, Coolers, and Process Heaters:
Heating Operations. Process heaters and heat exchangers preheat feedstock in distillation
towers and in refinery processes to reaction temperatures. Heat exchangers use either
steam or hot hydrocarbon transferred from some other section of the process for heat input.
The heaters are usually designed for specific process operations, and most are of cylindrical
vertical or box-type designs. The major portion of heat provided to process units comes from
fired heaters fueled by refinery or natural gas, distillate, and residual oils. Fired heaters are
found on crude and reformer preheaters, coker heaters, and large-column reboilers

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Shell & tube Heat exchangers

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Spiral heat exchangers

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Plate heat exchanger

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 Auxiliary units
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Cooling Operations.
Heat also may be removed from some processes by air and
water exchangers, fin fans, gas and liquid coolers, and
overhead condensers, or by transferring heat to other systems.
The basic mechanical vapor-compression refrigeration system,
which may serve one or more process units, includes an
evaporator, compressor, condenser, controls, and piping.
Common coolants are water, alcohol/water mixtures, or various
glycol solutions.

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 classification
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Heater and Boiler Operations.
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Steam is generated in main generation plants, and/or at various process units
using heat from flue gas or other sources. Heaters (furnaces) include burners
and a combustion air system, the boiler enclosure in which heat transfer takes
place, a draft or pressure system to remove flue gas from the furnace, soot
blowers, and compressed-air systems that seal openings to prevent the
escape of flue gas. Boilers consist of a number of tubes that carry the water-
steam mixture through the furnace for maximum heat transfer. These tubes run
between steam-distribution drums at the top of the boiler and water-collecting
drums at the bottom of the boiler. Steam flows from the steam drum to the
superheater before entering the steam distribution system.

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Heater and boiler

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 Auxiliary units
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Contd,
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Heater Fuel
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Heaters may use any one or combination of fuels including refinery gas, natural gas, fuel oil, and powdered
coal. Refinery off-gas is collected from process units and combined with natural gas and LPG in a fuel-gas
balance drum. The balance drum provides constant system pressure, fairly stable Btu-content fuel, and
automatic separation of suspended liquids in gas vapors, and it prevents carryover of large slugs of
condensate into the distribution system. Fuel oil is typically a mix of refinery crude oil with straight-run and
cracked residues and other products.
●
The fuel-oil system delivers fuel to process-unit heaters and steam generators at required temperatures and
pressures. The fuel oil is heated to pumping temperature, sucked through a coarse suction strainer, pumped
to a temperature-control heater, and then pumped through a fine-mesh strainer before being burned.
●
In one example of process-unit heat generation, carbon monoxide boilers recover heat in catalytic cracking
units as carbon monoxide in flue gas is burned to complete combustion. In other processes, waste-heat
recovery units use heat from the flue gas to make steam.

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Steam system

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 Auxiliary units
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Feedwater:
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supply is an important part of steam generation. There must always be as many pounds of water
entering the system as there are pounds of steam leaving it. Water used in steam generation must
be free of contaminants including minerals and dissolved impurities that can damage the system
or affect its operation.
●
Suspended materials such as silt, sewage, and oil, which form scale and sludge, must be
coagulated or filtered out of the water.
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Dissolved gases, particularly carbon dioxide and oxygen, cause boiler corrosion and are removed
by deaeration and treatment.
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Dissolved minerals including metallic salts, calcium, carbonates, etc., that cause scale, corrosion,
and turbine blade deposits are treated with lime or soda ash to precipitate them from the water.
Recirculated cooling water must also be treated for hydrocarbons and other contaminants

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Feed water system

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 Auxiliary units
●
Contd,feedwater treatment.
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Depending on the characteristics of raw boiler feedwater, some or all of the
following six stages of treatment will be applicable:
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Clarification;
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Sedimentation;
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Filtration;
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Ion exchange;
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Deaeration; and
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Internal treatment

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 Auxiliary units
●
Pressure-Relief Systems.
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Pressure-relief systems control vapors and liquids that are released by pressure-
relieving devices and blow-downs.
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Pressure relief is an automatic, planned release when operating pressure reaches a
predetermined level.
●
Blowdown normally refers to the intentional release of material, such as blowdowns
from process unit startups, furnace blowdowns, shutdowns, and emergencies.
●
Vapor depressuring is the rapid removal of vapors from pressure vessels in case of
fire. This may be accomplished by the use of a rupture disc, usually set at a higher
pressure than the relief valve.

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 Auxiliary units
●
Safety Relief Valve Operations. Safety relief valves, used for air, steam, and gas as
well as for vapor and liquid, allow the valve to open in proportion to the increase in
pressure over the normal operating pressure.
●
Safety valves designed primarily to release high volumes of steam usually pop open
to full capacity.
●
The overpressure needed to open liquid-relief valves where large-volume discharge
is not required increases as the valve lifts due to increased spring resistance.
●
Pilot-operated safety relief valves, with up to six times the capacity of normal relief
valves, are used where tighter sealing and larger volume discharges are required.
Nonvolatile liquids are usually pumped to oil-water separation and recovery
systems, and volatile liquids are sent to units operating at a lower pressure

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 Auxiliary units
●
Flare Systems.
●
A typical closed pressure release and flare system includes relief
valves and lines from process units for collection of discharges,
knockout drums to separate vapors and liquids, seals, and/or
purge gas for flashback protection, and a flare and igniter system
which combusts vapors when discharging directly to the
atmosphere is not permitted.
●
Steam may be injected into the flare tip to reduce visible smoke.

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Flare system

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 Auxiliary units
●
Fire Protection and Prevention.
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Vapors and gases must not discharge where sources of ignition
could be present.
●
Liquids should not be discharged directly to a vapor disposal
system.
●
Flare knockout drums and flares need to be large enough to
handle emergency blowdowns.
●
Drums should be provided with relief in the event of overpressure.

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Fire protection

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 Auxiliary units
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Pressure relief valves:
●
Must be provided where the potential exists for overpressure in refinery processes due to the following causes:
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Loss of cooling water, which may greatly reduce pressure in condensers and increase the pressure in the
process unit.
●
Loss of reflux volume, which may cause a pressure drop in condensers and a pressure rise in distillation towers
because the quantity of reflux affects the volume of vapors leaving the distillation tower.
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Rapid vaporization and pressure increase from injection of a lower boiling-point liquid including water into a
process vessel operating at higher temperatures.
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Expansion of vapor and resultant over-pressure due to overheated process steam, malfunctioning heaters, or
fire.
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Failure of automatic controls, closed outlets, heat exchanger failure, etc.
●
Internal explosion, chemical reaction, thermal expansion, or accumulated gases

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Pressure relief valves

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 Auxiliary units
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Wastewater treatment:
Is used for process, runoff, and sewerage water prior to discharge or
recycling.
●
Wastewater typically contains hydrocarbons, dissolved materials,
suspended solids, phenols, ammonia, sulfides, and other compounds.
●
Wastewater includes condensed steam, stripping water, spent caustic
solutions, cooling tower and boiler blowdown, wash water, alkaline and
acid waste neutralization water, and other process-associated water.
●

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 Auxiliary units
●
Pretreatment Operations.
●
Pretreatment is the separation of hydrocarbons and solids from wastewater. API(American
Petroleum Institute) separators, interceptor plates, and settling ponds remove suspended
hydrocarbons, oily sludge, and solids by gravity separation, skimming, and filtration. Some
oil-in-water emulsions must be heated to assist in separating the oil and water.
●
Gravity separation depends on the specific gravity differences between water and
immiscible oil globules and allows free oil to be skimmed off the surface of the wastewater.
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Acidic wastewater is neutralized using ammonia, lime, or soda ash.
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Alkaline wastewater is treated with sulfuric acid, hydrochloric acid, carbon dioxide-rich flue
gas, or sulfur.

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Water treatment system

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 Auxiliary units
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Secondary Treatment Operations.
●
After pretreatment, suspended solids are removed by sedimentation or air flotation.
Wastewater with low levels of solids may be screened or filtered. Flocculation agents are
sometimes added to help separation.
●
Secondary treatment processes biologically degrade and oxidize soluble organic matter by
the use of activated sludge, unaerated or aerated lagoons, trickling filter methods, or
anaerobic treatments.
●
Materials with high adsorption characteristics are used in fixed-bed filters or added to the
wastewater to form a slurry which is removed by sedimentation or filtration.
●
Additional treatment methods are used to remove oils and chemicals from wastewater.
Stripping is used on wastewater containing sulfides and/or ammonia, and solvent extraction
is used to remove phenols.

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 Auxiliary units
●
Tertiary Treatment Operations.
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Tertiary treatments remove specific pollutants to meet regulatory discharge requirements.
●
These treatments include chlorination, ozonation, ion exchange, reverse osmosis, activated
carbon adsorption, etc.
●
Compressed oxygen is diffused into wastewater streams to oxidize certain chemicals or to
satisfy regulatory oxygen-content requirements.
●
Wastewater that is to be recycled may require cooling to remove heat and/or oxidation by
spraying or air stripping to remove any remaining phenols, nitrates, and ammonia.
●
Fire Protection and Prevention.
●
The potential for fire exists if vapors from wastewater containing hydrocarbons reach a
source of ignition during treatment.

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 Auxiliary units
Cooling towers:
●
Remove heat from process water by evaporation and latent heat transfer between hot water and
air.
●
The two types of towers are crossflow and counterflow.
●
Crossflow towers introduce the airflow at right angles to the water flow throughout the structure.
●
In counterflow cooling towers, hot process water is pumped to the uppermost plenum and
allowed to fall through the tower. Numerous slats or spray nozzles located throughout the length
of the tower disperse the water and help in cooling. Air enters at the tower bottom and flows
upward against the water.
●
When the fans or blowers are at the air inlet, the air is considered to be forced draft. Induced
draft is when the fans are at the air outlet.

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Cooling towers

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 Auxiliary units
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Cooling Water.
●
Recirculated cooling water must be treated to remove
impurities and dissolved hydrocarbons.
●
Because the water is saturated with oxygen from being
cooled with air, the chances for corrosion are increased.
●
One means of corrosion prevention is the addition of a
material to the cooling water that forms a protective film on
pipes and other metal surfaces.

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Cooling water system

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 Auxiliary units
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Electric Power:
●
Refineries may receive electricity from outside sources or produce their own power with generators driven
by steam turbines or gas engines.
●
Electrical substations receive power from the utility or power plant for distribution throughout the facility.
●
They are usually located in nonclassified areas, away from sources of vapor or cooling-tower water spray.
Transformers, circuit breakers, and feed-circuit switches are usually located in substations. Substations
feed power to distribution stations within the process unit areas.
●
Distribution stations can be located in classified areas, providing that classification requirements are met.
Distribution stations usually have a liquid-filled transformer and an oil-filled or air-break disconnect device.
●
Turbines:
●
are usually gas- or steam-powered and are typically used to drive pumps, compressors, blowers, and
other refinery process equipment. Steam enters turbines at high temperatures and pressures, expands
across and drives rotating blades while directed by fixed blades.

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Electric power

Prepared by KARAM BALOCH

 Auxiliary units
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Gas and Air Compressors:
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Both reciprocating and centrifugal compressors are used throughout the refinery for
gas and compressed air.
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Air compressor systems include compressors, coolers, air receivers, air dryers,
controls, and distribution piping. Blowers are used to provide air to certain processes.
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Plant air is provided for the operation of air-powered tools, catalyst regeneration,
process heaters, steam-air decoking, sour-water oxidation, gasoline sweetening,
asphalt blowing, and other uses.
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Instrument air is provided for use in pneumatic instruments and controls, air motors
and purge connections.

Prepared by KARAM BALOCH

compressor

Prepared by KARAM BALOCH

 Auxiliary units
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Pumps, Piping and Valves:
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Centrifugal and positive-displacement (i.e., reciprocating) pumps are used to move hydrocarbons,
process water, fire water, and wastewater through piping within the refinery.
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Pumps are driven by electric motors, steam turbines, or internal combustion engines. The pump type,
capacity, and construction materials depend on the service for which it is used.
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Process and utility piping distribute hydrocarbons, steam, water, and other products throughout the
facility.
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Their size and construction depend on the type of service, pressure, temperature, and nature of the
products. Vent, drain, and sample connections are provided on piping, as well as provisions for blanking.
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Different types of valves are used depending on their operating purpose.
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These include gate valves, bypass valves, globe and ball valves, plug valves, block and bleed valves,
and check valves. Valves can be manually or automatically operated.

Prepared by KARAM BALOCH

 pumps

Prepared by KARAM BALOCH

 valves

Prepared by KARAM BALOCH

 Auxiliary units
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Tank Storage:
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Atmospheric storage tanks and pressure storage tanks are
used throughout the refinery for storage of crudes, intermediate
hydrocarbons (during the process), and finished products.
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Tanks are also provided for fire water, process and treatment
water, acids, additives, and other chemicals.
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The type, construction, capacity and location of tanks depends
on their use and materials stored.

Prepared by KARAM BALOCH

Storage tanks

Prepared by KARAM BALOCH