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A comparative assessment of resource efficiency in petroleum refining

Jeongwoo Han a,⇑, Grant S. Forman b, Amgad Elgowainy a, Hao Cai a, Michael Wang a, Vincent B. DiVita c

a Systems Assessment Group, Energy Systems Division, Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 S. Cass Avenue, Argonne, IL 60439, United states

b Sasol Synfuels International, 900 Threadneedle, Suite 100, Houston, TX 77079, United States

c Jacobs Consultancy Inc., 5995 Rogerdale Road, Houston, TX 77072, United States

h i g h l i g h t s

 Investigate refineries with various complexities and operational flexibilities.

 Categorize refineries into three groups by crude density and heavy products yield.

 Estimate GHG emissions cost to produce more of the desirable fuels.

 Complex refineries can process heavier crude into more gasoline and distillate.

 Complex refineries are more resource efficient, but more energy and GHG intensive.

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:

Received 12 January 2015

Received in revised form 4 March 2015

Accepted 10 March 2015

Available online 25 March 2015

Keywords:

Petroleum refinery

Life-cycle analysis

Energy efficiency

Resource efficiency

Greenhouse gas emissions

a b s t r a c t

Because of increasing environmental and energy security concerns, a detailed understanding of energy

efficiency and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the petroleum refining industry is critical for fair

and equitable energy and environmental policies. To date, this has proved challenging due in part to

the complex nature and variability within refineries. In an effort to simplify energy and emissions refin-

ery analysis, we delineated LP modeling results from 60 large refineries from the US and EU into broad

categories based on crude density (API gravity) and heavy product (HP) yields. Product-specific efficien-

cies and process fuel shares derived from this study were incorporated in Argonne National Laboratory’s

GREET life-cycle model, along with regional upstream GHG intensities of crude, natural gas and electricity

specific to the US and EU regions. The modeling results suggest that refineries that process relatively

heavier crude inputs and have lower yields of HPs generally have lower energy efficiencies and higher

GHG emissions than refineries that run lighter crudes with lower yields of HPs. The former types of

refineries tend to utilize energy-intensive units which are significant consumers of utilities (heat and

electricity) and hydrogen. Among the three groups of refineries studied, the major difference in the

energy intensities is due to the amount of purchased natural gas for utilities and hydrogen, while the

sum of refinery feed inputs are generally constant. These results highlight the GHG emissions cost a refi-

ner pays to process deep into the barrel to produce more of the desirable fuels with low carbon to hydro-

gen ratio.

 2015 Argonne National Laboratory. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC

BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction

Increasing concerns with the consequences of climate change

turns scrutiny towards the source and efficiency of energy produc-

tion and consumption. Within this context, petroleum is a major

source of global energy demand and a primary component of

transportation fuels. In 2011, petroleum accounted for 34% of

global energy consumption and 36% of global greenhouse gas

(GHG) emissions [1], while the transportation sector in the US

and the EU consumed 71% and 62% of total petroleum products,

respectively, as shown in Fig. S1 [2,3].

Regulations are being developed in the US and EU to reduce pet-

roleum consumption, encourage use of alternative fuels and pro-

mote energy efficiency. In the US, the Renewable Fuel Standard

(RFS) mandates the production of 36 billion gallons of renewable

fuels with various GHG emissions reduction thresholds relative

to conventional gasoline and diesel [4]. California implemented

the Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) in 2009 to reduce the GHG

intensity of transportation fuels [5]. The Renewable Energy

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.fuel.2015.03.038

0016-2361/ 2015 Argonne National Laboratory. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

⇑Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 630 262 6519.

E-mail

addresses:

(J.

Han),

(G.S.

Forman),

(A.

Elgowainy),

(H.

Cai),

[email protected] (M. Wang), [email protected] (V.B. DiVita).

Fuel 157 (2015) 292–298

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Fuel

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/fuel

Directive (RED) in the EU requires 10% of transportation energy

consumption to be produced from renewable sources by 2020

[6]. The production of energy from these renewable sources must

achieve a minimum 35% reduction in life-cycle GHG emissions

against conventional, petroleum-derived baseline fuels, with the

threshold being elevated to 50% in 2018 [7].

Notably, all of these regulations require a reliable estimation of

life-cycle

GHG

emissions

of

alternative

transportation

fuels,

including petroleum-derived gasoline and diesel baseline fuels.