4 How a refinery works

How a refinery
works
All refineries use distillation to separate crude oil into
Condenser
more useful components. More sophisticated refineries
Butane and
Distillation lighter like Humber also use a variety of advanced conversion
components
column wall Valve
Weir processes – such as cracking, alkylation, desulphurisation
and reforming – to improve the chemical structure of
Light feedstocks.
straight run
naphtha

Distillation
Distillation is the process of boiling a liquid and
Heavy collecting the condensed vapour. In petroleum refining it
straight run
naphtha is used to separate crude oil into more useful components.
A high tower, called a fractionating column, is used to
break down the crude oil. As crude enters the column,
Kerosene
the lighter, lower boiling point components vapourise
Liquid and rise to a level where the surrounding temperature
downcomer
Trays and pressure correspond to their boiling point.
Meanwhile, heavier, higher boiling point components
Valve trays descend in a liquid stream to a level where conditions
A variety of tray designs are used to
improve the separation process in a
match their boiling point.
distillation column. In this system, the
vapour rises through valves set into each Diesel
A refinery’s ability to upgrade low value components into
tray to enhance contact with the liquid
high quality products depends on the amount of additional
flowing over it. Unvapourised liquid
cascades over a weir onto the next level chemical conversion facilities it has.
down. This flexibility and sophistication is termed a refinery’s
complexity – and industry analysts rate Humber as by far the
most complex refinery in Europe.
Humber’s ability to enhance the quality of low grade
Atmospheric feedstocks enables it to buy the fuel oil that other refiners
gas oil
cannot upgrade and further refine it into more valuable
products. Some of the feedstock run at Humber comes from
other refineries’ distillation units, and is known as crude
tower bottoms or straight run atmospheric residue (SRAR).
SRAR is basically crude oil with most of the distillate and
lighter fractions creamed off.

The column is filled with trays containing holes,

Heater
Reboiler
Crude tower
Crude oil bottoms (SRAR)
Crude oil distillation
A distillation column partially vapourises liquid feedstock so that the resulting gas and liquid
components can be separated. The column contains a number of stages, called trays, to achieve
a higher degree of separation. Vapour rises up the column, bubbling through the liquid cascading
down the column from tray to tray. Lighter, lower boiling point components tend to be driven
upwards until they reach a level where the pressure and temperature is similar to their own.
Similarly, heavier, higher boiling point components are driven down the column. Consequently,
vapour becomes richer in lighter components as it rises while liquid becomes richer in heavy
components as it descends, resulting in overall separation of the feedstock.
which allow the ascending vapour to bubble through
the descending liquid, increasing contact between
the two.
The vapours are cooled, condensed and drawn
off as distillates at various points up the column:
gas oil first, then diesel, kerosene, naphtha and finally,
petroleum gases such as propane and butane.
The heavy bituminous compounds which are not
vapourised because of their very high boiling points,
are piped off from the bottom of the tower.
Cracking
Unfortunately, the relatively simple distillation process
produces more heavy oils than are needed and not
enough of the lighter products, such as petrol and diesel,
which have greater market value.
Cracking is used to convert the heavier gas oils into
more valuable products – petrol, diesel and gas – by
breaking down the complex molecule chains which make