Refining

Market Situation

In a global environment, refiners' feedstocks and products are bought and sold between all regions. To effectively compete on world wide basis, a refiner must have the ability to:

  • Process the least costly crude oil that it can handle, this mostly means heavier, more sour and high acid oils (TAN crude oils)
  • Adjust its product mix, normally defined as Gasoline /Distillate ratio (G/D) to meet changing demands
  • Handle different types of crude oils to take advantage of normally high differentials in light and heavy, mostly sour and high acid (TAN) crude oils
  • Make products to meet specifications required for different regions of the world.
  • Increase Refinery complexity to maximize light product values and production.
  • Increase hydrogen supply to process heavier crude oils and to make low sulfur products
  • Limit release of Carbon Dioxide and other greenhouse gases

KBR refining technologies include:

Commercial Applications

Heavy Crude Oil Processing

KBR utilizes its strong Refining technology portfolio and experience to assist the refiner in analyzing process alternatives and to identify the most cost-effective and flexible ones to meet a clients' specific needs. The KBR team has the technologies and know-how to design proprietary and open-art technology units for heavy oil and residue upgrading.

Refinery Modernization & Upgrading

Profitable refinery modernization through bottom of the barrel upgrading revolves around adding fit-for-purpose units and modernizing existing process units while achieving process and utilities synergies among these units and optimizing the product slate. KBR pays particular attention to properly integrating a new process unit into a base refinery process scheme to minimize capital cost.

KBR draws upon its extensive Technology base and vast experience in oil refining to find optimum solutions for the refiners.

Typical Refining Technology Applications

KBR is a process developer and technology licensor that provides a full-range of services for refinery conceptual development, engineering, procurement and construction and plant services. We have been involved with refiners in solving problems such as:

Increasing Refinery Capacity

  • Complement or debottleneck vacuum column with a ROSE© unit.
  • Debottleneck an fluid catalytic cracking unit with the ATOMAX™ feed injection system, closed cyclones, Cyclofines™ TSS third-stage separator and/or Flux Tube™ stripper baffles.
  • Increase conversion capacity and unload the FCC unit by converting the FCC feed hydrotreater to Moderate Pressure Hydrocracking (MPHC).
  • Debottleneck the FCC, hydrocracker, coker or visbreaker with the integrated addition of a ROSE© unit.
  • Debottleneck an existing solvent deasphalting unit with the addition of ROSEMAX™ vessel internals or full conversion to the ROSE© process.
  • Extend diesel yield by improved distillate cold flow properties.
  • Improve integration with cement, steel and other industries through the use of AQUAFORM™.

Moving to a Higher-Value Product Slate

  • Increase fluid catalytic cracking conversion with the ATOMAX™ feed injection system, closed cyclones, Cyclofines™ TSS and/or Flux Tube™ stripper baffles.
  • Upgrade light olefins from the FCC unit.
  • Gain flexibility for refinery gasoline-to-distillate ratio by revamping the FCC feed hydrotreater to MPHC.
  • Upgrade light cycle oil to gasoline and quality diesel blend stock with LCO upgrading technology.
  • Improve diesel cold flow properties with dewaxing technologies.
  • Raise the cetane number of diesel and the smoke point of kerosene/jet.
  • Produce high-quality deasphalted oil for lube oil base stock blending with ROSE©process.
  • Produce lube oils using LUBEMAX™, KBR's proprietary liquid-to-liquid extraction technology.
  • Reduce coke make by revamping the delayed coker to low pressure operation.
  • Reduce fuel oil yield and increase FCC feed with ROSE©.
  • Produce road asphalt from non-traditional crude oils using ROSE©.

Flexibility in Choice of Crudes

  • Modernize the FCC to crack stocks having higher carbon residues and/or metals or to crack residue by adding a catalyst cooler.
  • Complement the existing vacuum tower with a ROSE© unit.
  • Debottleneck an existing coker with the addition of ROSEMAX vessel interals or full conversion to the ROSE© process.
  • Integrate hydrocracking with ROSE© and FCC to maximize residue upgrading and conversion.
  • Produce diesel with excellent cold flow properties from waxy crudes with dewaxing technologies.
  • Utilize ROSE© as a lower cost residue metals removal step.

Environmental Improvements

  • Lower FCC flue gas stack opacity and extend power recovery blade life by adding a Cyclofines™ TSS third stage separator.
  • Lower FCC NOx emissions with counter-current regeneration.
  • Lower FCC SOx emissions and sulfur level in FCC products while achieving partial conversion to quality distillates with partial hydrocracking.

The development of the process configuration for a new grassroots refinery relies primarily on economically meeting the product slate requirements with available crudes while achieving operating flexibility. Additional considerations for cost savings include:

  • ROSE© processing of atmospheric bottoms in place of vacuum distillation
  • MPHC processing of FCCU feed in place of HDS
  • FCC processing of deep flashed or deasphalted oils

Considerations such as these are addressed by the KBR team while working with the client's refinery team. The refinery configuration alternatives are developed and evaluated using state-of the-art refinery modeling systems and employing KBR's cost database. KBR draws its experience from many refinery and upgrading projects processing heavy crudes such as Venezuelan heavy oil as well as Canadian bitumen and synthetic crudes.