Petroleum Refinery

Scope and System

It is a well to refinery gates study. The functional unit is 1 MJ of the output fuel. It follows an aggregated approach in which the refinery plant is considered to be a single module which encompasses sub-modules. The sub-process emissions in refinery are aggregated and emissions are calculated for total energy use. The refinery configurations are broadly classified as heavy crude refineries, medium crude, and light crude. Based on the above configurations, LCI is intended for the following refinery outputs: LPG, gasoline (petrol), naphtha, kerosene, jet-fuel, diesel, heavy fuel oil, lubricating oil, wax, asphalts, and liquid fuel from coal.

The whole framework could be divided into two types of models for the ease of data collection: foreground model and background model. Foreground model is developed on primary data while the background model is based on secondary data. In this study, extraction, transportation, infrastructure, blending components (chemicals) and electricity will be part of the background model. Refinery and its sub-processes are covered under foreground model. However, for some components of foreground model such as import from foreign countries that involves global supply chain, resorting to background model is imminent due to complex supply chains involved.

The study targets eight categories of refined fuels: 1) butane and propane, 2) naphtha, 3) gasoline(petrol), 4) kerosene and jet fuel, 5) diesel and gas oil, 6) lubricants and other products, 7) fuel oils and 8) other residues.The technologies that are assumed for the refinery process flows are :

• Unifer for sulphur and nitrogen removal for gasoline.
• Merox for desulphurzation in jet fuel and kerosene.
• Hydrotreaters for diesel and gas oil.
• Vacuum distillation units for fuel oils
• Catalytic Cracking unit is used to treat lighter fuels from the vacuum distillation.
• Heavier Fuels from the vacuum distillations unit are processed through visbreaker units