Distillation process

The oil that we get from the bed of the oceans is in the crude form which cannot be directly used for our purpose. It has to be subjected to various distillation process to get various products like Diesel petrol kerosene and Gasoline here is the detail process how it is done.






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Desalter unit washes out salt from the crude oil before it enters the atmospheric distillation unit.
Atmospheric distillation unit distills crude oil into fractions.
Vacuum distillation unit further distills residual bottoms after atmospheric distillation.
Naphtha hydrotreater unit uses hydrogen to desulfurize naphtha from atmospheric distillation. Must hydrotreat the naphtha before sending to a Catalytic Reformer unit.
Catalytic reformer unit is used to convert the naphtha-boiling range molecules into higher octane reformate (reformer product). The reformate has higher content of aromatics and cyclic hydrocarbons). An important byproduct of a reformer is hydrogen released during the catalyst reaction. The hydrogen is used either in the hydrotreaters or the hydrocracker.
Distillate hydrotreater unit desulfurizes distillates (such as diesel) after atmospheric distillation.
Fluid catalytic cracker (FCC) unit upgrades heavier fractions into lighter, more valuable products.
Hydrocracker unit uses hydrogen to upgrade heavier fractions into lighter, more valuable products.
Visbreaking unit upgrades heavy residual oils by thermally cracking them into lighter, more valuable reduced viscosity products.
Merox unit treats LPG, kerosene or jet fuel by oxidizing mercaptans to organic disulfides.
Alternative processes for removing mercaptans are known, e.g. doctor sweetening process and caustic washing.
Coking units (delayed coking, fluid coker, and flexicoker) process very heavy residual oils into gasoline and diesel fuel, leaving petroleum coke as a residual product.
Alkylation unit produces high-octane component for gasoline blending.
Dimerization unit converts olefins into higher-octane gasoline blending components. For example, butenes can be dimerized into isooctene which may subsequently be hydrogenated to formisooctane. There are also other uses for dimerization.
Isomerization unit converts linear molecules to higher-octane branched molecules for blending into gasoline or feed to alkylation units.
Steam reforming unit produces hydrogen for the hydrotreaters or hydrocracker.
Liquified gas storage vessels store propane and similar gaseous fuels at pressure sufficient to maintain them in liquid form. These are usually spherical vessels or "bullets" (i.e., horizontal vessels with rounded ends).
Storage tanks store crude oil and finished products, usually cylindrical, with some sort of vapor emission control and surrounded by an earthen berm to contain spills.
Amine gas treater, Claus unit, and tail gas treatment convert hydrogen sulfide from hydrodesulfurization into elemental sulfur.
Utility units such as cooling towers circulate cooling water, boiler plants generates steam, and instrument air systems include pneumatically operated control valves and an electrical substation.
Wastewater collection and treating systems consist of API separators, dissolved air flotation (DAF) units and further treatment units such as an activated sludge biotreater to make water suitable for reuse or for disposal.
Solvent refining units use solvent such as cresol or furfural to remove unwanted, mainly aromatics from lubricating oil stock or diesel stock.
Solvent dewaxing units remove the heavy waxy constituents petrolatum from vacuum distillation products.
Flow diagram of typical refinery

The image below is a schematic flow diagram of a typical oil refinery that depicts the various unit processes and the flow of intermediate product streams that occurs between the inlet crude oil feedstock and the final end products. The diagram depicts only one of the literally hundreds of different oil refinery configurations. The diagram also does not include any of the usual refinery facilities providing utilities such as steam, cooling water, and electric power as well as storage tanks for crude oil feedstock and for intermediate products and end products.









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There are many process configurations other than that depicted above. For example, the vacuum distillation unit may also produce fractions that can be refined into endproducts such as: spindle oil used in the textile industry, light machinery oil, motor oil, and various waxes.
The crude oil distillation unit


The crude oil distillation unit (CDU) is the first processing unit in virtually all petroleum refineries. The CDU distills the incoming crude oil into various fractions of different boiling ranges, each of which are then processed further in the other refinery processing units. The CDU is often referred to as the atmospheric distillation unit because it operates at slightly above atmospheric pressure.


Below is a schematic flow diagram of a typical crude oil distillation unit. The incoming crude oil is preheated by exchanging heat with some of the hot, distilled fractions and other streams. It is then desalted to remove inorganic salts (primarily sodium chloride).


Following the desalter, the crude oil is further heated by exchanging heat with some of the hot, distilled fractions and other streams. It is then heated in a fuel-fired furnace (fired heater) to a temperature of about 398 °C and routed into the bottom of the distillation unit.


The cooling and condensing of the distillation tower overhead is provided partially by exchanging heat with the incoming crude oil and partially by either an air-cooled or water-cooled condenser. Additional heat is removed from the distillation column by a pumparound system as shown in the diagram below.


As shown in the flow diagram, the overhead distillate fraction from the distillation column is naphtha. The fractions removed from the side of the distillation column at various points between the column top and bottom are called sidecuts. Each of the sidecuts (i.e., the kerosene, light gas oil and heavy gas oil) is cooled by exchanging heat with the incoming crude oil. All of the fractions (i.e., the overhead naphtha, the sidecuts and the bottom residue) are sent to intermediate storage tanks before being processed further.






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