Petroleum and

Petrochemicals Processes

◼ Dr. Ayham M. Al Rahawi

BSc Chem, BSc, MSc, PhD ChemEng, PEng
G.U.Tech 1
You have to leave the class if you break
the following rules
◼ Eating and drinking (except
water) are forbidden

◼ Notebook (laptop), IPad,

and Mobile are forbidden

◼ Please don’t disturb the

class
◼ If you disrespect class rules
◼ For each two lates, you will
be consider absent for one
lecture.
 Course Objectives
This course highlights the role of an
oil refinery in converting :
Crude oil
(using)
Physically and Chemically (Processes)
into
useful everyday products
like:

Petrol, Diesel, Lubricating oil, Fuel oil and bitumen.

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Course Learning Outcomes;
Upon successful completion of this course, a student will be able to:
◼ Demonstrate a basic understanding of chemical process science.
◼ Explain the molecular-chemical transformations of selected
processes along the value creation chain of (mostly petro-chemical)
raw materials to intermediate and final products.
◼ Describe the basic concepts and terminologies of Crude Oil and
Petroleum Refineries.
◼ Discuss the characteristics of crude oils.
◼ Analyze the key refinery processes
◼ Demonstrate how refinery products can be utilized to produce a wide
variety of many materials that have very important use in our daily
live.
◼ Discuss environmental destruction caused by refinery processes and
how to minimize environmental footprints caused by Petroleum
Industry 5
Text Book:
◼ Speight, J.G., The Chemistry and Technology of
Petroleum, Marcel Dekker Inc., Third Edition,
1999. ISBN 0-8247-0217-4.

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References
◼ Nelson, W. L., Petroleum Refinery Engineering,
McGraw – Hill Inc., Sixth Impression.

◼ Jones, D.S.J., Elements of Petroleum Processing,

John Wiley, 1995. ISBN 0-471-95254-0.

◼ McKetta, J.J., Petroleum Processing Handbook,

Marcel Dekker Inc., 1992. ISBN 0-8247-8681-5.
◼ Recent Developments in Metaheuristics
Lionel Amodeo, El-Ghazali Talbi &
Farouk Yalaoui
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Assessments

Course works (20%)

(Attendance, reports, assignment Or quiz)
Mid term One: (30%)
Final exam: (50%)

Attendance; YESSSSSSSSSSSS
Please;
Print your lecture’s notes.
Take notes ‘not all materials have written on slides’
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 Petroleum
What is Crude oil?
◼ Is a fossil fuel, formed from the remains of plants and animals
died in ancient seas around 300 million years ago.

◼ Crude oils is heavy liquid vary in color, from clear to tar-black,

and in viscosity, from that of water to almost similar to solid
viscosities.

◼ Chemically, most of crude oil composed from hydrocarbon

compounds mix with some metal and non-metal compounds like
Ni V, Fe, Cu & Sulfur, Nitrogen Oxygen and others.

◼ Some crude oil mix with solid bitumen (meaning rock oil), is
applied to certain bituminous fluids found in the earth. Some call it
asphalt. Recently, it called Kerogen (p.99). It differs but little in
chemical composition from petroleum.
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Recent Developments in Metaheuristics Lionel Amodeo, El-Ghazali Talbi & Farouk Yalaoui
Theory of Petroleum Origin
◼ Over time the landscape changed, and this assembly of un-
decomposed materials formed sediment and was buried in the
ground, finally reaching a depth where the pressure and heat
was sufficient to transform it into a material with high energy
density and wide usability, crude oil.

◼ Petroleum is fossil fuels formed millions of years ago from the

remains of living things (coal from plants and natural gas and
oil from sea creatures) - they were gradually buried by layers
of rock which stopped them rotting. The buried remains were
put under pressure and chemical reactions heated them up,
gradually changing into fossil fuels.

◼ The interval of depth where crude oil can be formed is called

the oil-window and is related to the earth's temperature.
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The oil-window temperature is between 60 and 150 C, which
correspond to a depth of about 2 to 6 kilometers.
If the temperature is too high, natural gas is developed. The
accumulation of material mainly happened during two periods of time,
100 and 150 million years ago.

Another theory state that fossil fuel Petroleum has probably been
formed by a slow decomposition of organic matters under the earth's
surface.

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The Search for Oil
◼ Oil companies usually contract out the
search for oil to exploration
geophysicists

◼ Exploration geophysicists utilize

▪ surface features
▪ surface rock
▪ reservoir rock
▪ Satellite images
▪ Gravity meters
▪ Magneto-meters
▪ Hydrocarbon sniffers sometimes called
electronic noses
▪ Seismo-meters [most common technique
used]
▪ Shock waves developed

◼ Oil exploration methods are still only about

10 percent successful in producing useful
well

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Setting Up the Rig
Once the land is ready, several holes are dug to make way for the rig and
main hole.

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 Drilling
◼ Drilling rigs and other machines were used.

◼ It may need from a few hundred to a

couple thousand feet to reach oil reservoir.

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Extracting the Oil
◼ Once the well is completed, the operators must start the flow of oil into the well.

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Crude oil is often located underground but it also found underneath the
sea bed.

Oil rigs or drilling platforms are used to drill through the sea bed to
obtain the oil.

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Oil Well

◼ The details of the origin of crude oil are

not fully understood but it is clear that it is
a none-renewable and a limited source of
energy.
◼ In mining for it, a well 3 or 4 inches in
diameter, and sometimes 700 or 800 feet
deep, is bored by drills, generally by (p.58)
steam-power.
◼ When rock containing petroleum is being
bored through, what called "a show of
oil" is found.

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 Transporting Crude oil to Refineries
1. Oil field to tanks:
Oil fields and offshore oil rigs generally have
hundreds of wells with flow lines that carry crude
oil to the lease tanks.

2. Flow lines & Pipelines:

The crude oil flows from the wells to the unseen
lease tanks via the flow lines, where it is
accumulated, sampled and measured prior to
further transportation via other connecting
pipelines.

Oil pipelines are considered to be a closed system

since the chemicals theoretically don’t touch the
environment, however leaks in the system do
occur.

3. Transportation:
oil tankers bring oil to refineries.

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Making oil useful

❑ Crude oil itself has no uses.

❑ In order to make crude oil useful substances, we

first have to separate the mixture into fraction of
different molecule compositions. Then to
convert it through another processes to huge
number of products.

❑ This is done in an oil refinery.

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The importance of oil
◼ These oil molecules are vital to our
way of life.

◼ We use them as highly portable

fuels for many forms of transport.

◼ We also use them as raw materials

from which a huge range of useful
everyday substances are made.
 In General
◼ Crude oil is a mixture of different sized hydrocarbons.

◼ The exact composition depends upon where the oil comes from
but typically it contains a lot of big molecules.

◼ The formation conditions - never identical.

◼ Known crudes (types) > 100

◼ Most important area for crude – Middle East

◼ Production of Saudi Arabia is 26% world reserve

Crude oil Classifications [Ch. 2 p.31 ]
In more detail, crude oil may be classified into
A) According to Chemical composition:
1) Paraffinic Crudes: if
• paraffin’s (Cn H2n)+ naphthenes > 50%, or
• paraffin's > naphthenes, or
• paraffin's > 40%

2) Naphthenic Crudes: (cycloalkanes) if

• paraffin's + naphthenes >50%
• naphthenes > paraffin's
• naphthenes >40%

3) Paraffinic – Naphthenic Crudes: if

• aromatics < 50%

• paraffin's < 40%
• naphthenes < 40% 22
4) Aromatic – Naphthenic Crudes
• aromatics > 50%

5) Aromatic - Intermediate Crudes

• aromatics > 50%
• paraffin's >10%

6) Aromatic – Asphaltic Crudes

• naphthenes > 25%
• paraffin's < 10%

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B) According to API institute
The American Petroleum Institutes (API) generally classifies crude
oil according to:

1. The geographic location it is produced in:

Major Type Based on Geography
a) Far Eastern
b) Middle Eastern
c) North Sea
d) West Texas, Brent,

2. Its API gravity (an oil industry measure of density)

a) The heavy, or lubricating oil, and
b) The light oil.

3. The sulfur content.

a) Sour
b) Sweet 24
Crude Oil Reserves

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 Crud Oil Properties
◼ Petroleum is a very complex collection of compounds.

◼ The liquid part of petroleum is called crude oil.

◼ The color of crude oil goes from almost colorless to black and
the viscosity, at room temperature, varies from easy flowing to
almost solid.

◼ The composition of crude oil does not only vary between

different fields, it is also likely to vary by depth and between
different wells in the same field.

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Physical Characteristics
Colour: Dark Red, Brown, Black, etc.

Viscosity: From As Fluid As Water to Tar-Like

Odour: From Nil to Rotten Eggs

Pour Point: 32 °C to below −57 °C

Density: 800 - 1000 kg/cc

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Chemical Characteristics
Crude oils are made of the following elements/ compounds:
◼ Carbon: C1 to C360 in Different Molecular Structure

◼ Hydrogen

◼ Sulfur – found in hydrogen sulfide, sulfides, disulfides, elemental sulfur

◼ Nitrogen – found in basic compounds with amine groups

◼ Oxygen - found in organic compounds such as carbon dioxide, phenols,

ketones, carboxylic acids
◼ Metals – mainly nickel, iron, vanadium, copper, arsenic

◼ Salts – such as sodium chloride, magnesium chloride, calcium chloride

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Main crude oil parts
◼ Crude oil is a mixture of different sized hydrocarbons.
◼ The exact composition depends upon where the oil comes from
but typically it contains a lot of big molecules
Composition of Typical Petroleum Samples

Element Natural gas (wt%) Crude oil (wt%) Bitumen (wt%)

carbon 65.0–80.0 85.0 80.2

hydrogen 20.0–25.0 12.0 7.5
oxygen trace >2.0 7.6
nitrogen 1.0–15.0 >1.5 1.7
sulfur >0.2 >3.0 3.0

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Refinery
◼ Organized and coordinated arrangement of manufacturing process to
provide physical & chemical change of crude oil

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 Distillation
◼ Distillation is a process that can be used to separate a pure liquid from a
mixture of liquids – it works when the liquids have different boiling points
Fractional Distillation

◼ Fractional distillation differs from distillation only in that it separates

a mixture into a number of different parts, called fractions

◼ A tall column is fitted above the mixture, with several condensers

coming off at different heights

◼ The column is hot at the bottom and cool at the top – substances
with high boiling points condense at the bottom and substances with
low boiling points condense at the top

◼ Like distillation, fractional distillation works because the different

substances in the mixture have different boiling points
Fractional Distillation

◼ Watch the demo of fractional distillation of crude oil…

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Petroleum Products

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End of Chapter One

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