Exergy analysis of an atmospheric residue desulphurization hydrotreating process for a crude oil refinery

The exhaustion of petroleum reserves and the declining supply of conventional feedstock have forced refineries to use heavier crude oil in their production. Removing the undesirable components containing sulphur and metals in the atmospheric residue (AR) fraction requires extensive catalytic hydrotreating (HT) atmospheric residue desulphurization (ARDS) process. In this work, we endeavour to collect and present a comprehensive dataset to develop and simulate the ARDS HT model. This model is then used for an exergetic analysis to evaluate the performance of the ARDS HT model regarding the exergy destruction, the location of losses and exergetic efficiency. The massive exergy destruction is caused by significant differences in chemical exergy of source and product streams during separations, fractionation and reactions. The exergy destruction in the equipment independent of chemical exergies such as heat exchangers, pumps and compressors is relatively low. This exergetic analysis revealed that the majority of the processing equipment in the ARDS HT process performed satisfactorily. However, the remaining equipment requires improvement for its performance in regards to exergetic efficiency or/and avoidable exergetic losses. To enhance the efficiency of the equipment that is intensive in terms of exergy and energy use, the use of clean and high purity renewable hydrogen and several process rectification is proposed.

Economy in Times of Crisis: An Economic Analysis of the Energy Policy during COVID-19 Pandemic

The oil and natural gas industry plays an important role in the Indonesian economy, as a source of revenue for the state budget and a source of energy (particularly fuel) to power various sectors of life throughout Indonesia. Lockdown and restrictions on human movement have led to a direct reduction in demand for fuel. In addition to a decline in consumption, Covid-19 also resulted in a decrease in the price and production of oil and gas energy, including the cessation of upstream activities and the reduction of refining activities (refinery). The recommendations put forward include the establishment of strategic petroleum reserves, reviewing oil refinery projects and green fuel, and not reducing the selling price of fuel.

Illuminating a Path for Organic Synthesis Towards Sustainability. No One Said It Would Be Easy…

A personalized account is presented describing some of the stories behind the scenes in efforts to convert organic chemistry into a more sustainable discipline. These are part of a group ‘crusade’ started almost 15 years ago aimed at providing technologies illustrative of how key reactions used today can be ‘faster, better, cheaper’ when run in recyclable water. Hence, the option now exists to do organic synthesis in a far more environmentally responsible fashion. By contrast, most of organic chemistry developed over the past 200 years that relies on organic solvents continues to generate enormous amounts of pollution, while depleting finite petroleum reserves and our supplies of many precious and base metals. Making the switch to water, Nature’s chosen reaction medium, akin to that in which bio-catalysis is typically performed, is inevitable.1 The Story Begins: A Different Type of Prejudice2 Are We up to the Challenge? Too Late Now…3 ‘Impossible’ Reactive Metal Chemistry in Water4 Didn’t I Once Say: ‘It’s All about the Ligand’?5 What Happens When Our Supply of Palladium Runs Out?6 What Are the Implications from These Tales for Today and Tomorrow?7 What Is the ‘Broader Impact’ of This Work?8 The Bottom Line…

The impact of seismic interpretation methods on the analysis of faults: a case study from the Snøhvit field, Barents Sea

Five seismic interpretation experiments were conducted on an area of interest containing a fault relay in the Snøhvit field, Barents Sea, Norway, to understand how the interpretation method impacts the analysis of fault and horizon morphologies, fault lengths, and throw. The resulting horizon and fault interpretations from the least and most successful interpretation methods were further analysed to understand their impact on geological modelling and hydrocarbon volume calculation. Generally, the least dense manual interpretation method of horizons (32 inlines and 32 crosslines; 32 ILs × 32 XLs, 400 m) and faults (32 ILs, 400 m) resulted in inaccurate fault and horizon interpretations and underdeveloped relay morphologies and throw, which are inadequate for any detailed geological analysis. The densest fault interpretations (4 ILs, 50 m) and 3D auto-tracked horizons (all ILs and XLs spaced 12.5 m) provided the most detailed interpretations, most developed relay and fault morphologies, and geologically realistic throw distributions. Sparse interpretation grids generate significant issues in the model itself, which make it geologically inaccurate and lead to misunderstanding of the structural evolution of the relay. Despite significant differences between the two models, the calculated in-place petroleum reserves are broadly similar in the least and most dense experiments. However, when considered at field scale, the differences in volumes that are generated by the contrasting interpretation methodologies clearly demonstrate the importance of applying accurate interpretation strategies.

Enhanced Oil Recovery Using CO2 in Alaska

Alaska holds more than 68 billion barrels of proved oil reserves and more than 36.7 trillion cubic feet of proved natural gas reserves with some special conditions such as proximity to permafrost, making Alaskan petroleum reserves unique. The low temperature in shallow reservoirs prohibited hydrocarbons’ ideal maturation, thereby generating several heavy and viscous oil accumulations in this state. This also limits the enhanced oil recovery (EOR) options, leaving the thermal methods off the table to avoid permafrost thawing, which can cause wellbore collapse. Several solutions have been attempted for improving oil production from heavy and viscous oil in Alaska; however, they have not yielded the desired recovery, and ultimate recovery factors are still less than the global average. One solution identified as a better alternative is using CO2 as an injecting fluid, alternated by water or mixed with other injectants. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of all studies on using CO2 for enhanced oil recovery purposes in Alaska and highlights common and unique challenges this approach may face. The suitability of CO2-EOR methods in the Alaskan oil pools is examined, and a ranking of the oil pools with publicly available data is provided.

Exploring the effect of acid modulators on MIL-101 (Cr) metal-organic framework catalysed olefin-aldehyde condensation; A sustainable approach for the selective synthesis of nopol

The development of efficient and sustainable strategies that evades the utilization of petroleum reserves is highly challenging yet inevitable today. In this regard, the conversion of pine tree-derived β-pinene to...

A Linguistic Analysis of Petroleum-Related English Research Article Titles

Research article titles constitute a special type of text - concise, clear, and informative. The specificity of article titles is determined by a number of factors such as the object of research, the author’s personal style, academic tradition, the field of study among them. Today, article titles from different scientific areas are in the focus of scientific attention. This article presents the results of a linguistic analysis aimed at determining similarities and differences of research article titles from journals on petroleum science. The theoretical value has the descriptive analysis of technical article titles which can further be compared with titles from other areas of research. According to the obtained results, the titles were 15 words on average. The overwhelming majority (98%) of the titles had a nominative character; 2% were subject-predicate sentences, mainly, interrogative. Words were seven characters long, on average. Nouns, function words and adjectives were the most frequently occurred word classes; on the contrary, numerals, adverbs and verbs - the least frequent words. The most common punctuation marks were hyphens, commas, and colons, indicating the complexity of technical terms, enumeration and elaboration of the object of research and geography of petroleum sites. Names of petroleum reservoirs, formations and basins with their location specification, multisyllabic professional terms and abbreviations, constituting 30% of the article titles’ lengths on the average, can be considered special features of article titles on petroleum science. For this reason, a long title is typical of petroleum-related research articles. Additionally, more articles were devoted to richer petroleum reserves.

Introduction to this special section: Middle East

The Middle East is one of the world's most prolific regions in terms of petroleum reserves and production. It accounts for one-third of global oil production, one-sixth of gas production, about half of proved oil reserves, and two-fifths of proved gas reserves. Recent discoveries of unconventional resources have added even more reserves to the area's vast resources. Historically, many of the conventional fields in the Middle East were discovered by using conventional geophysical exploration methods. The continuing search for conventional and unconventional reservoirs has led to a rapid advancement of geophysical technologies in data acquisition, processing, and interpretation. These advanced technologies are aimed at solving region-specific challenges in defining the complexity of the near surface and subsurface. This is evidenced by the increasing activities in the development and application of new geophysical technologies in the exploration, development, and production of petroleum resources.

MOPHORLOGICAL AND THERMAL STUDIES OF ISOLATED SAMMAZ-14 MAIZE COBS NANO FIBRE

The growing concerns about global warming and depleting petroleum reserves have made scientists/researchers focus more on the use of natural fibres such as Maize cob, bagasse, coir, sisal among others. About 180 kg of cobs are obtained from each ton of maize shelled which has little utilization or no utilization. This study utilizes maize cob from SAMMAZ-14 maize variety for the extraction of nano cellulose using Chemico-mechanical method. Alkaline hydrolysis was performed with 5% NaOH for 4hrs with MLR of 1:10. Ball milling was done for 5 hrs with BMR of 30:1. The extracted nanocellulose were characterized by thermal characterization (TG and DTG), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), Energy Disperse X-ray (EDX) and atomic force microscopy (AFM), which confirmed the extracted Maize cob nano fibres (MC-NF) were in nano scale ranging from 1-100 and 1-200nm in diameter and length respectively. Thermal analysis showed MC-NF has more thermal stability than untreated maize cob (MC-UT) whose degradation was initiated at lower temperature with higher charred formation. Morphological studies showed MC-NF has spindle like structures while the untreated maize cob (MC-UT) is plain due to high amorphous portion on the cellulosic structure.