Daniella Johansson

Integration of Fischer-Tropsch fuel production with a complex oil refinery

The oil refining industry is facing harder regulations on renewable content in its products. One way to meet this is to produce diesel and gasoline from gasification of biomass via a Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. In this paper, integrating a biomass-to-FT syncrude process with a refinery is compared to a stand-alone biomass-to-FT syncrude process, in terms of the consequences for CO2 emissions and energy balances. The upgrading of the FT syncrude is in both cases accomplished at the refinery, in the existing units or in new units. The studied system includes a circulating fluidized-bed biomass gasifier with a biomass input of 500 MW (50% moisture content) and a complex refinery with a crude oil capacity of 11.4 Mt/y. The integrated FT-syncrude production shows, regardless of assumptions of marginal electricity generation, the largest CO2 emission reduction. Moreover, if the almost clean CO2 stream from the biomass-to-FT-syncrude production is captured, the reduction potential can be significantly increased.

AN ANALYSIS FOR IDENTIFYING ENERGY SAVING OPPORTUNITIES FOR A PETROCHEMICAL CLUSTER IN TIMES OF CLIMATE CHANGE

Industrial process clusters have good opportunities to collectively reduce energy usage and CO2 emissions. It is however essential to start an energy efficiency analysis with the process plant that is central for the cluster’s energy and material conversion. This paper illustrates this strategy for a petrochemical cracker plant located at the heart of a petrochemical cluster. A number of measures are identified that could reduce the cracker plant’s CO2 emissions by 13% and decrease the use of refrigeration by 20 MW. A number of options are discussed for harnessing the energy surplus created.