Processing industry is intended for producing several types of fuel and wide range of end products from hydrocarbon feedstock.
In itself, hydrocarbon raw materials are multicomponent combinations. Herein, extracted products contain other chemical elements, e. g. sulphur, nitrogen, helium etc. To extract them from the feedstock and, on the top of that, recovery of end products, oil and gas processing technologies are improved.
Oil and gas processing technology: what end products are extracted from hydrocarbons?
Oil refining
Crude oil from fields is sent via tanks or pipelines to the ORP (oil refinery plant). On industrial facility feedstock passes through steps of additional cleaning from mechanical impurities and dehydration and is sent to rectification column.
In this unit crude oil refining takes place. Intermediate products are gasoline and diesel fractions as well as residue which ratio is 50 %. Until 2015, when fees for this bottom product had not been increased in Russia, branch enterprises gained big income from residue when selling it abroad.
Economical changes forced ORP owners to upgrade units and equipment for oil refining. At that time secondary processes integration have been increased leading to increase of additional feedstock output for diesel fuel and high-octane petrol production.
Nowadays it is easy to evaluate ORP technological infrastructure level: is atmospheric residue deep conversion unit (ARDCU) operated at the facility? Process equipment consists of two sections: residue vacuum distillation shop and flux delayed coking unit.
Using such unit, ORP produces naphta and light gasoil — feedstock for motor fuel production, LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) which is an independent end product. Another element of oil chemical refining is flux from which coke is extracted (electrode, anode). Flux is also sent to bitumen production facilities (roofing, road).
ARDCU operation allows to reach raw feedstock refinery yield up to 98 %. Today this value is the top value for the industry. Other end products extracted from chemical oil refining are diesel fuel including winter and arctic marks, petrol with high octane number, propane and butane mixtures, sulphur granules.
Gas processing
Oil refining and gas processing technologies are similar, they are aimed to extract maximum amount of end products from hydrocarbons. Main components extracted from volatile feedstock are methane, ethane, propane, butane.
Natural and casing head gas extracted from oil during its production come to GPP. By the way, for decades it has not been considered as feedstock for processing, so it was disposed by burning it in field flares.
Widely applied gas (casing head gas) processing technology is low-temperature condensation. Hydrocarbon mixture is cooled down in the unit, when temperature falls fractions are converted in liquid state.
Methane and ethane as the most cold-resistant components remain meanwhile in gaseous phase and directed to the trunk pipeline. Butane and propane become in fact marketable products, in particular LHCG (liquefied hydrocarbon gases).
Natural gas processing occurs on the gas fractionation unit. This process is called gas fractionation. During this process main end products are produced — automotive and commercial propane and butane mixture (PBA and CPBM). Extracted fractions of isobutane and isobutylene, propane and isopentane become feedstock for rubbers production.
One more extremely promising trend in gas processing field is LNG (liquefied natural gas) production. The process is based on cooling of special previously prepared (purified) natural gas — methane up to minus 160 degrees Celsius. In result methane converts to liquid. It is poured in huge gas carriers (special tankers which are able to transport liquefied gas to long distances). At arrival point gas is drained from the tanker, passes through the warming unit converting it again to gas and further via pipes pumped to end consumers.
What do petrochemistry technologies give?
When using petrochemistry technologies, not only fuel and gas mixtures are produced from hydrocarbon feedstock but also quite tangible materials. People use items from those materials every day.
Do you need a carrier bag — this question is always asked in supermarkets. Here products in polypropylene-film package are also purchased, the same material is used for reinforcing geomesh for traffic roads which you use when come back home. Warm in apartments is provided with thermal insulations from polystyrene. Fresh air comes to the room when you open a window wing made of polyvinyl chloride (PVC).
All these examples are products of oil refining and gas processing. There is no doubt that hydrocarbons are the main treasure and fortune of our country.