(562b) CO2 Management in Petroleum Refinery

The petroleum refining industry is considered to be one of the most important industries affecting daily life. However, this industry is facing many new and challenging situations, including such new trends as increased heavy crude markets, a shrinking market for fuel oils, clean-fuel legislation that encourages production of ultra low-sulfur (ULS) fuels, and strict green house gas (GHG) regulations to reduce CO2 emissions into the atmosphere. Refineries thus face a serious need to increase the capacity of their conversion units and to increase their consumption of hydrogen to meet the new requirements. These increases should be planned with reference to allowable CO2 emission limits. Refineries therefore need an appropriate tool for planning their operations and production.

The consideration of CO2 management and the integration with refinery planning and the hydrogen network required the formulation of a CO2 management model. This model focused on the refinery emission sources and the mitigation options. The refinery emissions sources are the fuel system, hydrogen plant, and FCC unit, and the mitigation options considered are load shifting, fuel switching, and capturing technology. The optimization results showed that CO2 mitigation options worked successfully together to meet a given reduction target. The results show that load shifting can contribute up to a 3% reduction of CO2 emissions and fuel switching can provide up to 20% reduction. To achieve greater than 30% reductions, a refinery must employ capturing technology solutions. The proposed model provides an efficient tool for assisting production planning in refineries and at the same time determines the optimum hydrogen and CO2 emissions strategies.