• What is a petroleum refinery?
  • Petroleum refineries are large-scale industrial complexes that produce saleable petroleum products from crude oil (and sometimes other feedstocks like biomass). The details of refinery operations differ from location to location, but virtually all refineries share two basic processes for separating crude oil into the various product components.
  • What are petroleum refining processes?
  • Petroleum refining processes are the chemical engineering processes and other facilities used in petroleum refineries (also referred to as oil refineries) to transform crude oil into useful products such as liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), gasoline or petrol, kerosene, jet fuel, diesel oil and fuel oils.
  • Will refineries be built around oil-to-chemical processes?
  • We believe, in the future, refineries will be built around oil-to-chemicals (OTC) processes, in contrast to the current state of the art where oil is first fractionated and the resulting streams are treated separately to manufacture an extensive portfolio of products.
  • Will crude oil be used in refineries in 2050?
  • Although refineries of today convert mostly crude oil, we predict a gradual change to the refinery input stream so that only CO 2 and agricultural and municipal waste (which includes biomass and plastics) are used in 2050 (Fig. 1a).
  • How has demand for transportation fuels shaped the petroleum refining industry?
  • (1) Considering that demand for transportation fuels has shaped the current petroleum refining industry, (3) this change in patterns (see Figure 1 for liquid fractions derived from oil) has stirred intense research and development activities into oil-conversion processes that maximize lighter products at the expense of fuels.
  • What were oil refineries like before WW2?
  • Prior to World War II in the early 1940s, most petroleum refineries in the United States consisted simply of crude oil distillation units (often referred to as atmospheric crude oil distillation units).