Hassan ElBanhawi

About this Book (Preface):-

Volume 4 in the collection "Petroleum Refining" is devoted to the main equip­ment found in a refinery or a petrochemical complex. As such, it is a logical sequel to the first three volumes that have already been published.
Distillation operations, which are crucial in oil refining, obviously rely mainly on separation techniques. However, they also require the use of heat transfer equipment which provides the heat energy needed for all these sepa­rations. Moreover, reaction techniques are central to all the refining processes which convert molecular species in crude oil so as to obtain products with constantly adapted and improved properties to meet market demand.
One of the features of the oil industry is that it implements liquids and gases almost exclusively. In order to carry these phases at every stage of their processing, specific equipment such as pumps, compressors, turbines and ejectors is required. In addition, a highly complex piping system makes the connections among the different pieces of equipment, in order to constitute the end products by blending and dispatch them to consumption nodes.
A refinery is thus a very complex technical facility and its profitability can be ensured only by strict and constant control of all the component parts, to guarantee product quality, operational safety and environmental protection. These aims are attained by measurement, control and supervision techniques, which are now of vital importance in all petroleum and petrochemical com­plexes.
Since there are numerous and varied pieces of equipment involved, they have been grouped in type categories having similar functions. In this connec­tion, the classification of chemical engineering unit operations has been used and the following will be examined successively:
1.Equipment for separating the components of a mixture, either by mass transfer between phases (gas-liquid or liquid-liquid) or by physical separation of multiphase systems such as gas-liquid, liquid-liquid, gas-solid and liquid­solid mixtures.
2.Equipment for achieving heat transfers, such as furnaces and heat exchangers.
3.Equipment called reactors where chemical reactions take place.
4.Equipment used to accomplish the mechanical operations of fluid trans­port (pumps, compressors) or mixing.
5.Equipment in charge of controlling all the above-mentioned operations by measuring physical or physicochemical variables with sensors and using the measurements in control and management systems. These measurements allow operations to be optimized as illustrated by the last chapter, devoted to energy optimization in the units.
Due to the diversity of all this equipment, it was necessary to call on authors from a variety of sectors ( engineering companies, construction, ope­rations, process engineering), each having a specific approach. As a result, the chapters in this volume were not drafted according to a uniform blueprint, but present the diversified viewpoints of the engineers in the profession instead.