Oil and Gas Engineering

Oil Refining

 As crude oil often contains unstable mixture of several hydrocarbons, water, inorganic salts, water-soluble trace metals and suspended solids, so this process is to reduce corrosion, plugging, and fouling of equipment and to prevent poisoning catalysts in processing units. For industrial applications and to make the oil economically viable crude oils must be purified and converted into products having an almost constant composition, well adapted to their use. Typical refinery products are LPG, kerosene, gasoline, fuel oil, lubricating oil, paraffin wax, asphalt and tar.

 Essentially, refining breaks down into its various components, which then are selectively reconfigured into new products. Oil refineries are quite complex plants but are relatively mature and highly integrated. This process meets the demand for cleaner products and is the major drive for process refinement and development of novel processes.