Since the beginning of civilization there have been wars. Even though wars are mostly associated with negative ideals, more often than not war gives rise to the creation of new inventions and pushes the creative mind into overdrive. World War II’s effects on the petroleum refinery process were no exception. The military needed better lubricators for their war machines and accessible sources of combustible energy such as gasoline and diesel fuel increased greatly in demand for weapons such as tanks. The world Second World War had the effect of many different countries collaborating in order to fight against their oppositions. This included the collaboration of many different international refinement companies to ultimately find more effective ways to increase the octane number and overall yield of fuels such as diesel and gasoline. They improved upon ionic and catalytic cracking processes and concentrated all their efforts on supplying readily available fuel for deploying soldiers on war fronts as well as energy to fuel their vehicles as mentioned above. War has always had a major impact on the technology sector because at its core nature, war is a last ditch effort to get the upper hand on an opponent. I believe that there will still be many, many large-scale wars to come, along with the technological advancement they bring, before humanity as a whole is united under a singular government.

During World War II there was a high rate of merchant-marine tankers lost due to Nazi submarines operating along the Eastern coast of United States. As a result of this war time disturbance, prompted was the development and construction of the Virginia and Colonial product pipelines to link the Gulf Coast with the Northeast United States. This provided a network of crude oil petroleum products pipelines, unexposed to the Nazi submarine strategy. Additionally oil was the driving factor determining who would win the war. Oil is processed or refined in various ways and used to make toluene for making bombs, laying roads, manufacturing of rubber for tires, gasoline for trucks and airplanes, and as a lubricant for guns and machinery. Due to this demand for petroleum products, an improved refinery process was essential. This lead to the development and use of catalyst to improve the quality of transportation fuels, and to increase their supply. These improvements included catalytic cracking of heavy oils, alkylation, polymerization, and isomerization. These added improvements changed the industry of petroleum and refinery process for years to come. This enabled the petroleum industry to meet the demand required of high performance combat aircraft’s, to supply increasing demand, and to supply the war time needs demanded of the industry.

References

1. The U.S. Oil Refining Industry: Background in Changing Markets and Fuel Policies,Anthony Andrews, Robert Pirog, Molly F. Sherlock, 2010

2. http://hnn.us/article/339

3. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/454440/petroleum-refining/81778/Conversion-to-light-fuels

Most municipal wastewater refineries are used for the treatment of water from residential houses and areas. The equipment in these plants are not equipped to treat the toxic runoff from hydrocarbons that come from petroleum refineries. These wastewaters are divided into four different types of categories which are: sanitary sewer, storm water, water and steam, and cooling water. These categories contain many harmful pollutants such as dissolved solids, suspended solids, cyanides, and liquid hydrocarbons among a few others. Utilizing a steam process these pollutants must be taken out from the water from the water. After the completion of this process where the toxic chemicals are stripped from the wastewater, they can be brought to municipal wastewater treatment plants and the water can be treated. There is also the option of using biological means to treat the water. The use of microorganisms that eat or dissolve the pollutants can be used as a secondary means of treatment. This process produces bicoke which. Wastewater treatment is a very important part of keeping any urbanized area’s water clean and safe.

The discovery of the catalytic reforming method was to increase the yield of high octane number gasoline yields form refineries. Because of the large demand of gasoline form automobiles, many refineries today still utilize the method of catalytic reforming to increase the amount of higher quality gasoline from their crude oil feedstock.  Some of the by-products worth mentioning from this process are hydrogen and LPG because of their increasing use in the refining industry. The hydrogen is used for hydrocracking and hydrotreating and LPG has been used increasingly for fuel for vehicles.

The process of catalytic reforming involves taking heavy naphtha straight run fractions that typically have a low-octane number and converting them into high-octane number products. As stated in the lesson, many catalytic reforming processes utilize platinum which means that in many cases the naphtha feedstock needs to be hydrotreated in order to protect the sulfur or nitrogen species from platinum poisoning. Interestingly enough, the most desired product of catalytic reforming is not high octane gasoline, but rather hydrogen. Hydrogen is used in many applications in the refining industry but is most desired in hydrocracking, a cracking process covered in previous lessons.

One limitation of catalytic reforming is the side reaction of hydrocracking. Mainly because this process consumes hydrogen (a greatly desired by product of catalytic reforming) and produces gaseous hydrocarbons which decrease the reformate yield. Although these reactions are exothermic they can still occur when there is a high concentration of hydrogen gas as well as being in a high temperature environment.

Catalytic reforming is a very important part of the refining industry and has become an even more important part when coupled with hydrocracking as the by-products can be very beneficial between processes. The united states and many other countries around the world utilizes the chemical reactions of catalytic reforming to produce higher yield gasoline which can be used for fuels in automobiles s well as the formation of LPG and hydrogen gas.

The process of thermal cracking has been around for quite some time. Being discovered back in the late 1800’s, it is a very effective way of breaking down longer straight chain paraffin into shorter chian ones through the use of high temperatures and free radical reactions. The most commonly used cracking methods utilizing free radical reactions are hydrogen abstraction and beta bond scission. Hydrogen abstraction is when a free radical “plucks” away hydrogen from the carbon chain causing it to become shorter. Beta bond scission is when the beta bond, in respect to the position of the free radical, becomes “cut” due to the movement of the free radical along the carbon-carbon chain. After doing some quick research it is apparent that the process of more conventional thermal cracking as we recognize it was invented back in 1912 and operated under temperatures between 700-750F and a constant pressure of 90psi. However more modern techniques of thermal cracking involve what we know as vis breaking and coking. Coking has three main types which are flexi, fluid, and delayed coking. Each has a distinctive process that separates itself from the other two. For example delayed coking always utilizes two drums. Vis breaking occurs when the viscosity of the crude oil is reduced while using high temperatures to accomplish this. Overall the thermal cracking process has become an invaluable part of the petroleum, refining industry and is a growing field that is constantly making minor advancements to get the best result out of its feedstock.

Source Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracking_(chemistry)

Dewaxing is an important separation process whereby wax is removed from DAO feed stocks coming from deasphaulting. Furthermore, wax is a marketable by-product making the process much more useful. In addition, the process is optimized to produce lubricating oil base stock with important properties such as low pour points, low volatility, high viscosity index and high thermal stability. There are two main methods for dewaxing: solvent dewaxing and catalytic dewaxing. The first method is solvent dewaxing; solvent dewaxing is a physical process that uses stage-wise refrigeration of the feedstock after mixing it with the solvent. Wax crystals are formed and are then separated no a filter cloth by a rotating drum. the wax is scraped off the filter cloth and is taken to a steam stripping unit to recover and reuse the solvent. The final wax product, known as slack wax, has many uses such as producing candle wax, micro wax for the cosmetics industry, and petroleum jelly. Also, the dewaxed oil is taken to a steam stripping unit to recover the solvent and use it to produce more lube oil base stock. The second dewaxing method is catalytic dewaxing; catalytic dewaxing is a chemical process whereby wax is removed by selective cracking of n-paraffins. The selective cracking of the n-paraffins occurs in the pores of molecular sieve catalysts, known as zeolites, with pore openings on the order of 0.6 nm. This separates the i-paraffins  from the rest of product because of their larger size caused by their molecules’ branching. Thus, the process lowers the pour point and increases the ratio of i-paraffins to n-paraffins in the product. Hydrogen is also fed into the reactor to prevent coking from occurring on the catalyst beds. Furthermore, distillate fuels are produced as a by-product of the cracking process. Advantages of catalytic dewaxing include a lower capital investment and a better product stability.

Sources:

Course Webpage

Wikipedia: Solvent Dewaxing, Catalytic Dewaxing