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From Heavy Crude to Fuels

Atmospheric Distillation Lighter Gases and Liquids Residue
Gas Fuels

Delayed Coking
Foster Wheeler and delayed coking are closely linked. Our coking technology, the Selective Yield Delayed Coking, SYDEC(SM), process, is the market leader. We have designed and engineered more delayed cokers world-wide than all other technology providers and engineering contractors combined.

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Coke Drum Gas Plant

Liquid Fuels

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Coke By-products Fractionator

Delayed Coking Unit Vacuum Distillation Unit

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Coke

The process - step by step

Water and other contaminants are removed from the crude oil feedstock.

Why invest in coking?

With refining margins under pressure, the industry needs to find ways to remain profitable. A number of factors are affecting refining margins, including the crude feedstock selection. Light crude oils yield more high-quality fuel products, while cheaper, heavier crudes from Canada, Mexico and Venezuela are lower in quality. Investing in a coking unit can allow the refiner to turn this cheaper feedstock into high-value transportation fuels and petrochemical feedstock, as well as coke. What feedstocks can be used? Foster Wheelers experience includes the coking of such esoteric materials as pyrolysis tars, thermal tars, decant oil, lube extracts, shale oil, and gilsonite, as well as numerous petroleum residues from atmospheric and vacuum crude units. Coking units range in capacity from 50 to 3,300 tons per day.

The crude is then heated and fed to the atmospheric tower where distillation (boiling) occurs at atmospheric pressure. Lighter material, boiling below a cut point in the 650-700F range (340-370C) is recovered and processed elsewhere in the refinery to produce fuel gas, naphtha, gasoline, jet fuel and diesel. Heavier material boiling above this cut point range leaves the tower bottom and goes to the vacuum distillation unit. This heavier material, also called atmospheric residuum, is heated and fed to the vacuum tower where distillation takes place, this time under vacuum. Lighter material, boiling below a cut point in the range of 1000-1050F (540-565C) is recovered and processed elsewhere in the refinery to produce gasoline and asphalt. Heavier material, boiling above the cut point, leaves the tower bottom and goes to the delayed coking unit. This heavier material from the vacuum unit, also called vacuum residuum, is the heaviest part of the crude oil, similar if not heavier, to the tar/asphalt used on roads. The vacuum residue feed and recycle are preheated and fed to the coker heater where they are heated in a range of 915-990F (490-530C) and fed to the coke drums. At this temperature, it takes about 24 hours (delayed) at pressures of 25-75 psi (1.7-5.2 bars), until the hot material cracks into gas, light products and solid coke. Inside, this would look like an erupting volcano with coke accumulating like solidifying lava at the bottom of the drum.

After the coke reaches a predetermined level in one drum, the flow is diverted to another drum to maintain continuous operation. The full drum is steamed to strip out uncracked hydrocarbons. Once cooled by water injection, it is decoked by mechanical or hydraulic methods. A typical pair of drums will have a capacity of 30-35,000 barrels per stream day (BPSD). The number and size of the coke drums will be optimised to fit the unit capacity. Some units have up to eight drums. Cut coke falls through the coke drum bottom and is recovered in a pit or pad. The coke is then crushed and shipped from the refinery to a coke yard to ultimately feed the coke market. After the coke has been removed from the drum, the drum is closed, preheated and put back on line. The light products from the coke drum flow to the main fractionator where they are separated into: a gas which goes to the gas plant for recovery of its constituents coker naphtha that is further processed in the gas plant and downstream unit and then blended into gasoline light coker gasoil which will be processed and blended into diesel heavy coker gasoil which is further upgraded in the hydrocracker or the fluid catalytic cracking unit for production of transportation fuels such as gasoline and diesel. The gas plant comprises towers and absorbers that further separate coker gases and naphtha into propane, butane and gasoline components and sweet fuel gas after amine treating.

What happens to the coke? By far the largest national producer of petroleum coke is the USA, which accounts for more than 50% of capacity with over two million barrels per day. Around 75% of the world petroleum coke output is burned as a fuel. A number of oil companies use petroleum coke as a solid fuel in cogeneration facilities and utility companies, especially in the USA, use petroleum coke as a cost-efficient alternative to coal. Internationally, other applications are proportionately more important, like electrodes and cement manufacture. Petroleum coke is the main ingredient in carbon anodes for primary aluminium smelting and in graphite electrodes for steel production via the electric arc furnace process.

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