Refinery Consumption of Own Produced Fuels 5

Refineries burn what would otherwise have given them the lowest margin when sold, i.e. the lightest stuff except H2 (i.e. fuel gas) and the heaviest stuff. I don't think many refineries burn propane or butane in any application if not grudgingly.

Fuel gas can be offgas from many different units e.g. reformers and is composed of mainly C1 and C2, plus H2 which you will want to recover before burning the rest. Composition is set by operating conditions of the unit where it comes from. Other than burning (which takes place in a furnace, a place to heat up a process stream) fuel gas, you can also use it to produce H2 in a steam reformer. A big advantage of fuel gas vs heavy fuel is environmental credits (cleanliness).

No two refinery fuel gas systems are the same since they are usually the product of many decennia of bright and not-so-bright ideas as to how to make the best of those "waste" streams. Hence I doubt if you could find much specific literature on fuel gas but maybe someone else could shine a brighter light on that.

Epoisses, has target the answer he is quite right. For ambient reasons and when price is convenient some refiners also burn natural gas mixed with refinery fuel gas.

Regards

Luis Marques

This is my first post on this website, and the speed of getting responses is amazing here. Thanks a lot for all your kind help.

I know it is hard to find some specific literature on this topic, and really appreciate more light regarding my questions.

Let me add a little to the previous good responses. In our refinery we run the following simple philosophy for the use of fuel to our furnaces and steam boiler house. First we burn fuel gas to the maximum, as we cannot export it, and if we did not burn the FG, we would have to flare it, which is unacceptable. Then we burn low grade fuel oil, which is kept distinct from sales fuel oil. This tends to be more cracked material, and lower value. As epoisses suggests, refiners will burn the lower valued material first, and rarely burn LPG (propane/butane). We are unfortunately in the last case, as an oilfield near to our refinery has started up, with a high proportion of LPG. We cannot physically store all the LPG produced, so from time to time we also run the LPG to fuel gas, though we are building additional storage facilities now.
Remember through this, that oil product sale = revenue, and fuel burned means you cannot sell it. Even low valued products can make a significant cash revenue, particularly today, so it is good to be energy efficient, and therefore it pays off to reduce fuel consumption.

Most refineries I know cosume more or less some propane/ butane. In the past, I always wonder why they burn such valuable fuels. It's so nice to hear a real case from KazakhJeff. Thanks.

By the way, I'd appreciate any help for providing sample data regarding fuel gas composition.

For refinery fuel gas composition and CO2 emissions see the paper bellow.

uregina.ca/ghgt7/PDF/papers/nonpeer/401.pdf.

Regards

Luis Marques

Is anyone familiar with Pemex-Refinacion operations? I have come across a Case Study they performed from 1997 to 1999 where they used a catalytic combustion process at their Miguel Hidalgo refinery to burn heavy residuals w/o gas augmentation and claimed 99% combustion of the product. I also have a tif image of emissions testing before and after installation of this technology and the apparent published results are like night and day. In the paper it claims they applied this technology to all their furnaces after two years of studies completed in 1999. I 'understand' that they kept it a commercial competitive secret until recently. They have allowed its export commercialization due to the high fuel oil prices and the potential profits to be made in the emissions credits trading to come from Kyoto. The first installation at an IPP steam power plant claims similar results this year. It is all confusing as **** to me. How could Pemex-Refinacion keep such a secret for 6 years and if it is not true why would an IPP support the claim and have a plan to install this technology at all of its oil fired boilers in his system? The owner of the technology offers to design, fabricate, ship and install anywhere in the world with no upfront charge. They want chromatographic testing done before and after and daily fuel consumption records. They and the plant build and agree on a "before" baseline curve of fuel consumption vs load. They chromatographic test the amount of UHC's in the flue gas...twice before and twice afterwards. They install their equipment on the fuel and air side supplies and claim 99% combustion of haevy fuel oil and cleaner furnaces, reduced emissions. In test after test of furnaces at Miguel Hidalgo, they show marked improvement of pressure profiles and cleanliness and instead of removing burners from service at same production levels, the refinery management decided to increase production. Any comments appreciated.

The future for heavy fuel oil is quite uncertain at the moment due to new marine emission regulations and specifically low sulphur.
Refiners appear reluctant to invest in Residue desulphurisation, quite understandably since it is expensive.
This means that the marine industry is contemplating a future based on distillate fuels. A few years ago HFO was around $120-130 a ton and this week distillates briefly (Houston) topped $1000 a ton but unless the current high prices are sustained there will still be insufficient differential to justify low sulphur HFO.
This could mean that refiners will have to use more residue themselves (using flue gas desulphurisation) or convert the residues to other products.

JMW

Testing of a combustion catalyst technology on furnaces burning bunker from 1995 through 1998 at Pemex-Refinacion, Miguel Hidalgo refinery.

The furnaces were being augmented with lighter gas fuels but they eventually cut that out and ended up burning bunker only. The Hidalgo refinery claimed production increase from less than rated cap of 315k bbl/day to 330k/day a 4.7% increase in just 8 months chiefly attributed to using these cells. They reported less contaminating emissions and lower production fuel operating costs.

This year, these cells were installed at a plant I used to provide services on years ago in the early 90's and the current Oper.Mgr. there backs the claim...they burn no.6FO. The plant mgr says this company offered them to install and demonstrate and prove their claims with no upfront charges.

Has anyone any knowledge or experience at Pemex-Refinacion who can shed some light on this experience back in 1995- 1999 or later? Is there anything similar in refineries on our Gulf Coast? I'm originally from the Gulf (Mississippi Delta and NOLA while with GE I&SE) area but many, many years ago. Thanks

Turboco1:

Can you be more specific about the "cells" (which I presume were the combustion catalyst(s) employed? Thanks!

Orenda

Orenda

Well, that's my dilemna. I cannot get that out of the vendor/exporter.
All I know is what I read... that some Catalysis engineer from the Instituto de Petroleo who's life long job was to improve combustion of residual oils at Pemex hit the jackpot with lowering emissions and fuel consumption in the mid 90's. The process was tested from 1995 to 1998 and patented and supposedly a 5 year competition agreement held the technology off the commercial export market. I only found out about it this year after an IPP customer of mine installed the cells and reported significant savings in bunker fuel costs and lower emissions. They had the owners of the technology send me the daily operating data and I could find no errors. The steam plant had already decided to honor their contract and pay however, the equipment vendor also wanted to make sure the calculations were correct and he wasn't being shorted.

I've been investigating everywhere for any new developments like this to support the claims and cannot find anything. I saw an emissions before & after report from Pemex and I have this plant operations managers' word that it works. He says they are going to expand their use of these cells in other units.

Since catalysis is a science unto itself, and now there is "magnetochemical" engineering and quantum physics with "spin" -ning molecules, etc... I only trust what I see and what a few reliable friends tell me.

Refinery areas are where most of this stuff comes from so here I am looking for further info. But I have to say, I cannot imgagine refineries nor IPP's letting some profits slip away...so from that aspect alone I'm interested and it has my full attention one way or the other, especially for some of the oil fired plants I know in developing countries who need to reduce emissions and fuel operating costs. I usually concentrate on efficiency improvements to steam paths. The closest to combustion technologies I ever got were gas turbines. I read in this years McGraw-Hill Power gen handbook that "catalytic combustion" is the future...what I want to know is if the future is here already.

Turboco1;
the only thing is that whereas you and I would invest in something proven to save money, the surprise is how difficult it is to get the money approved even with a payback of less than one year.
Many operations do indeed let profits slip away and they do it as a matter of routine.
It sometimes takes a good excuse to get the money spent such as EPA action, Health and safety etc anything with a good chance of a big fine or a jail sentence and even then, we see people going to jail when they should have known better.
Maybe I'm just a cynic.....


JMW

jmw:
I've checked further... this company asks for specific data, they design the cells, buy materials and fabricate the cells, ship to site, send a crew over to install on the air side and the plant is responsible to install on the supply line FROM the storage tanks to the Day Tank under technical advice... NO COST UPFRONT. The cell on the oil supply line from the storage tank to the day tank has no affect on operation if the Day Tank is filled prior to installation. The air side installation is on the individual burners, one at a time, so no shutdown is required...unless the system by design requires one big cell on the forced draft supply. The contract is purely PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT of the furnace/boiler from Chromatographic combustion gas testing and fuel consumption comparisons of before and after...NO MONEY UPFRONT and low risk, no improvement no charge. I checked and understand they have a successful history and no reports of any failures or quality problems. If you reduce your electric bill at home with a new technology by $50, and you only have to pay $25 for the improvement, you reduced your electric bill $25 at no cost...that is the deal this IPP has and they paid nothing for the installation. So I asked why isn't this "out there" already and the answer was that the Pemex-Refinacion had it sewn up with an agreement for its own use so many years before commercialization. That is why this IPP just now has it this year. Something to look at seriously.

Pemex is an exception to most commercial rules. Pemex is a governmental entity not a commercial entity. Many decisions have a non-commercial basis. Clearly the assorted commercial refiners differ. Only a coincidence would match the Pemex choices with a commercial operation.

John

Thanks for all your help on this topic.

Now, I've started another topic regarding GHG & CAC emissions coefficients of refinery fuel gas combustion simulation.

If you are interested, please go to for details. Thanks in advance for your participation.

jsummerfield,

I can wholly understand the pemex point of view but not the IPP, as in "Independent Power Producer" using this and paying possibly 50-100k / month in "fuel savings" on a little 60mw unit???

I have always felt that engine manufacturers think that they sell engines; refiners think they are buying incinerators