Refinery

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see Refinery (disambiguation).

A refinery is a production facility composed of a group of chemical engineering unit
processes and unit operations refining certain materials or converting raw material into products
of value.
Contents
[hide]

1 Types of refineries
o

1.1 A typical oil refinery

1.2 A typical natural gas processing plant

1.3 Sugar refining

1.3.1 Milling

1.3.2 Refining

2 References

Types of refineries[edit]
Different types of refineries are as follows:

petroleum oil refinery, which converts crude oil into highoctane motor fuel (gasoline/petrol), diesel oil, liquefied
petroleum gases (LPG), jet aircraft fuel, kerosene, heating fuel
oils, lubricating oils, asphalt and petroleum coke;

food oil refinery which converts cooking oil into a product that is
uniform in taste, smell and appearance, and stability;

sugar refinery, which converts sugar cane and sugar beets into
crystallized sugar and sugar syrups;

natural gas processing plant, which purifies and converts raw

natural gas into residential, commercial and industrial fuel gas,
and also recovers natural gas liquids (NGL) such
as ethane, propane, butanes and pentanes;

salt refinery, which cleans common salt (NaCl), produced by

the solar evaporation of sea water, followed by washing and recrystallization;

metal refineries refining metals such

as alumina, copper, gold, lead, nickel, silver, uranium, zinc, mag
nesium and cobalt;

A typical oil refinery[edit]

Main article: Oil refinery
The image below is a schematic flow diagram of a typical oil refinery depicting various unit
processes and the flow of intermediate products between the inlet crude oil feedstock and the
final products. The diagram depicts only one of the hundreds of different configurations. It does
not include any of the usual facilities providing utilities such as steam, cooling water, and electric
power as well as storage tanks for crude oil feedstock and for intermediate products and end
products.[1][2][3][4]

Schematic flow diagram of a typical oil refinery.

A typical natural gas processing plant[edit]

Main article: Natural gas processing

The image below is a schematic block flow diagram of a typical natural gas processing plant. It
shows various unit processes converting raw natural gas into gas pipelined to end users.
The block flow diagram also shows how processing of the raw natural gas yields byproduct
sulfur, byproduct ethane, and natural gas liquids (NGL) propane, butanes and natural gasoline
(denoted as pentanes +).[5][6][7][8][9]

Schematic flow diagram of a typical natural gas processing plant.

Sugar refining[edit]

Harvested sugar cane ready for processing.

Sugar is generally produced from sugarcane or sugar beets. However, the global production of
sugar from sugarcane is at least twice the production from sugar beets. Therefore, this section
focuses on sugar from sugarcane.
Milling[edit]
Main article: Sugar mill

Sugarcane is traditionally refined into sugar in two stages. In the first stage, raw sugar is
produced by the milling of freshly harvested sugarcane. In a sugar mill, sugarcane is washed,
chopped, and shredded by revolving knives. The shredded cane is mixed with water and
crushed. The juices (containing 10-15 percent sucrose) are collected and mixed with lime to
adjust pH to 7, prevent decay into glucoseand fructose, and precipitate impurities. The lime and
other suspended solids are settled out, and the clarified juice is concentrated in amultiple-effect
evaporator to make a syrup with about 60 weight percent sucrose. The syrup is further
concentrated under vacuum until it becomes supersaturated, and then seeded
with crystalline sugar. Upon cooling, sugar crystallizes out of the syrup. Centrifuging then
separates the sugar from the remaining liquid (molasses). Raw sugar has a yellow to brown
color. Sometimes sugar is consumed locally at this stage, but usually undergoes further
purification.[10] Sulfur dioxide is bubbled through the cane juice subsequent to crystallization in a
process, known as "sulfitation". This process inhibits color forming reactions and stabilizes the
sugar juices to produce mill white or plantation white sugar.
The fibrous solids, called bagasse, remaining after the crushing of the shredded sugarcane, are
burned for fuel, which helps a sugar mill to become self-sufficient in energy. Any excess bagasse
can be used for animal feed, to produce paper, or burned to generate electricity for the local
power grid.
Refining[edit]
Main article: Sugar refinery

Sugar refinery in Arabi, Louisiana, United States.

The second stage is often executed in heavy sugar-consuming regions such as North
America, Europe, and Japan. In the second stage, white sugar is produced that is more than 99
percent pure sucrose. In such refineries, raw sugar is further purified.

References[edit]
1.

Jump up^ Gary, J.H. and Handwerk, G.E. (1984). Petroleum

Refining Technology and Economics (2nd Edition ed.). Marcel
Dekker, Inc. ISBN 0-8247-7150-8.

2.

Jump up^ Guide to Refining from Chevron Oil's website

3.

Jump up^ Refinery flowchart from Universal Oil Products' website

4.

Jump up^ An example flowchart of fractions from crude oil at a

refinery

5.

Jump up^ Natural Gas Processing: The Crucial Link Between

Natural Gas Production and Its Transportation to Market

6.

Jump up^ Example Gas Plant Flow Diagram

7.

Jump up^ From Purification to Liquefaction Gas Processing

8.

Jump up^ Feed-Gas Treatment Design for the Pearl GTL Project

9.

Jump up^ Benefits of integrating NGL extraction and LNG

liquefaction

10. Jump up^ Shore, M; Broughton, N.W.; Dutton, J.V.; Sissons, A.

(1984). "Factors affecting white sugar colour." (PDF). Sugar
Technology Reviews 12: 199.

Categories:

Chemical processes

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