Simulation and planning of a petroleum refinery based on carbon rejection processes

A superstructure for the simulation of a typical petroleum refinery process scheme is developed in this work. The model consists of hydrotreating of naphtha, jet fuel, kerosene, light gas oil and FCC feed. It also includes catalytic reforming and catalytic cracking. For the processing of bottom-of-barrel the model considers delayed coking, visbreaking and gasification. The superstructure is capable to select those processes that will meet the products specifications. The processing units have operating variables which affect the product flow rates and properties. The objective function is to maximize the profitability of the entire refinery, optimizing the operating variables of the units and vacuum residue flow rate sent to each upgrading process. The best process scheme resulted that with the combination of delayed coking and gasification.

► Carbon rejection based oil refinery modeled and simulated.
► Superstructure was developed to plan a petroleum refinery process scheme.
► The best process scheme aiming at maximizing refinery profit was obtained.