Petroleum Refining

Scope of the subject

• Introduction of Crude oil, Its origin,
composition, classification and characteristics
• Petroleum products, their composition,
Properties and application
• Different properties of petroleum products
• Testing of petroleum products
• Different refining units: Flow sheets, Process
description, Operating conditions and
catalysts used
Introduction
Petroleum
• Petroleum (Crude oil) means rock oil.
• It is a oily substance, mixture of several different hydrocarbon
compounds, made up of carbon and hydrogen .
• It also contains small amount of other elements mainly sulfur.
Other elements are Oxygen, Nitrogen and silica.
• Crude oil along with coal and natural is classified as a fossil/
product fuel.
• Fossil fuels are formed when sea plants and animals die, and
remains become buried under several thousand feet of silt,
sand or mud at high pressure and temperature.
• Petroleum takes millions of years to form and therefore
petroleum is also considered to be a non-renewable energy
source.
Origin of crude oil
Origin of crude oil
• Conventional crude oil is trapped into the
permeable rocks, which are surrounded by the
non-permeable rocks.
Production of conventional crude oil
• Conventional crude oil are produced by simple
pumping operations
Production of conventional crude oil
Cont.
• Initially oil is comes out up to surface due to natural pressure of
reservoir.
• Simple vertical pumping grids are used for removal of crude oil.
• If rocks of reservoir are not permeable enough, more advanced
horizontal pumping grids are used to increase the recovery.
 Production of conventional crude oil
Cont.
• More reservoir volume can be approached by a single well by
using horizontal wells. Therefore recovers more oil from less
permeable rocks
• The costs of horizontal wells are significantly higher than
vertical wells. However, use horizontal wells reduces the
number of wells required for oil production.
• Horizontal wells are also more famous in large reservoir
maintain by single institution as a large area of the reservoir
can be covered by a single well.
Production of conventional crude oil Secondary and
advanced recovery
• As crude oil is produced from well, the reservoir
pressure is gradually reduced, which results
reduction in oil production.
• Secondary and advanced oil recovery systems are
employed in this case. These methods are also
called the enhanced oil recovery systems or
(EOR).
 Production of conventional crude oil
Secondary and advanced recovery Cont.
• In secondary recovery methods, pressure of
reservoir is increased by injecting the secondary
fluid such as water, air or CO2.
Production of conventional crude oil Secondary
and advanced recovery Cont.
• Injecting fluid helps to maintain or increase the pressure
in the reservoir and improves the oil recovery.

• It also helps to Pull the oil which is stuck or trapped inside

the porous rocks and cannot be removed in primary
recovery.
• Most of the conventional oil fields enters their secondary
recovery stage with in 10 to 15 years after production.
• Most of the famous oil fields in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait
are in their secondary recovery stage since last 30 to 40
years.
Production of conventional crude oil Secondary
and advanced recovery Cont.
Water or any other fluid is injected from the corners or boundaries of
the reservoirs, generally below the oil well. Oil is recovered from
center of the reservoir.
 Production of conventional crude oil Secondary
and advanced recovery Cont.
• In ternary or advanced recovery methods are working on
following principles.
1. Increase the pressure of the reservoir by injecting the fluid.
2. Reduce the viscosity of crude oil so that it can easily flow to
the oil well.
3. Porosity of reservoir rocks can be increased to enhance the
flow of crude oil and release the trapped crude oil.
• Viscosity of crude oil may be reduced by injecting the
different chemicals or gases (CO2 or Air), or by increasing
the temperature of crude oil by injecting the steam in the
reservoir.
• Porosity of reservoir rocks can be increased by cracking the
rocks through advanced methods such as fracking.
 Production of conventional crude oil
Secondary and advanced recovery Cont.
• Most of the oil reservoirs uses the primary or
secondary recovery methods.
• Advance/ ternary recovery methods are expansive.
• They require high investments for development of
field as well as costly to operate.
• These methods are only profitable when oil prices
are relatively high.
• Different oil producing companies now developing
these methods since last 10-12 years.
(Development of a field may take 10 to 15 years)
 Production of conventional crude oil
Secondary and advanced recovery Cont.
 Non-conventional sources of crude
oil/Petroleum
• Tar sends/oil sends.
• Tight oil/ Shale oil
• Coal liquefaction
• Natural gas liquefaction
• Bio fuels.
 Tar sends/oil sends
• Some times when crude oil from a reservoir or whole
reservoir migrated to the surface of earth due to
geological processes.
• Light hydrocarbons are slowly vaporized with time and
only high molecular weight hydrocarbon containing
sticky tar/bitumen remaining with clay and water
remain.
• These heavy oil/extra heavy oil deposits contain nearly
80 to 85% clay/sand, 10 to 15% oil and rest water.
• Alberta Canada and Venezuela contains world biggest
oil sand reserves.
• sand oil reserves are world biggest oil reserves of crude
oil and may contain more than 2 trillion barrels of
reserves.
Tar sends/oil sends Cont.
• Oil sand contains only 10% of oil.
• This oil is heavy or extra heavy crude oil, these oil is
semi-solid phase and looks like bitumen.
• Special efforts are required to extract this oil from the sand.
Tar sends/oil sends Cont.
• After mine the sand oil it is processed with hot
water or steam which reduces the viscosity of oil
and change it in liquid phase.
• Oil is then removed from oil sand by compression.
• This heavy crude oil further processed to reduced
the molecular weight of the hydrocarbons and
reducing the viscosity of crude oil before sending to
refinery.
Tight oil/Shale oil
• Oil shale is an organic-rich fine-grained sedimentary
rock containing kerogen (a solid mixture of organic
chemical compounds) from which liquid
hydrocarbons, called shale oil.
• Shale formations generally contain closed pores,
the oil trapped inside the closed pores can not be
produced by conventional methods.
• Due to closed porous structure the oil present
inside shale formation is called tight oil.
Tight oil/Shale oil Cont.
• Shale oil can only be produced by cracking the shale
formation.
• It opens the pores and free the oil trapped inside
the pores.
• This process is called fracking.
• Fracking is the process of drilling down into the
earth before a high-pressure water, sand and
mixture is directed at the rock to crack it and
release the gas inside.
• Water, sand and chemicals are injected into the
rock at high pressure which crack the rock and
allows the gas and oil to flow out to the head of the
Tight oil/Shale oil Cont.

•Unlike the sand oil/tar oil, the oil produced from shale structures are ultra light in
nature.
• Lower molecular weight hydrocarbons have lower viscosity and can be easily flow
through the cracked shale formation.
•US is the largest producer of the Shale oil.
•The Production of Shale oil is increased exponentially since 2010.
Coal and natural gas Liquefaction
• Advantages of liquid fuels
• Liquid fuels have several advantages over gaseous
or solid fuels.
• Liquid fuels can be easily and economically
transported in comparison to gaseous or solid fuels.
• Liquid fuels are more safe to store in comparison to
gaseous or solid fuels.
• Liquid fuels have more energy density (in terms of
per unit weight or volume) than gaseous or solid
fuels.
• Liquid fuels are more suitable for transportation
vehicle.
Coal and natural gas Liquefaction
• Coal, petroleum and natural gas all are
hydrocarbons with variations of molecular weight
and composition of carbon and hydrogen present.
• Coal and natural gas can be converted in liquid
hydrocarbons called synthetic petroleum.
Coal and natural gas Liquefaction