An oil refinery or petroleum refinery is an industrial process plant where petroleum is transformed and refined into useful products such as gasoline (petrol), diesel fuel, asphalt base, fuel oils, heating oil, kerosene, liquefied petroleum gas and petroleum naphtha. Petrochemicals feedstock like ethylene and propylene can also be produced directly by cracking crude oil without the need of using refined products of crude oil such as naphtha. The crude oil feedstock has typically been processed by an oil production plant. There is usually an oil depot at or near an oil refinery for the storage of incoming crude oil feedstock as well as bulk liquid products. In 2020, the total capacity of global refineries for crude oil was about 101.2 million barrels per day.
A refinery is a production facility composed of a group of chemical engineering unit processes and unit operations refining certain materials or converting raw material into products of value.
In petrochemistry, petroleum geology and organic chemistry, cracking is the process whereby complex organic molecules such as kerogens or long-chain hydrocarbons are broken down into simpler molecules such as light hydrocarbons, by the breaking of carbon-carbon bonds in the precursors. The rate of cracking and the end products are strongly dependent on the temperature and presence of catalysts. Cracking is the breakdown of a large alkane into smaller, more useful alkenes. Simply put, hydrocarbon cracking is the process of breaking a long chain of hydrocarbons into short ones. This process requires high temperatures.
A visbreaker is a processing unit in an oil refinery whose purpose is to reduce the quantity of residual oil produced in the distillation of crude oil and to increase the yield of more valuable middle distillates by the refinery. A visbreaker thermally cracks large hydrocarbon molecules in the oil by heating in a furnace to reduce its viscosity and to produce small quantities of light hydrocarbons.. The process name of "visbreaker" refers to the fact that the process reduces the viscosity of the residual oil. The process is non-catalytic.
Barauni Refinery is an oil refinery located in Begusarai city in the state of Bihar, operated by Indian Oil Corporation. It was the dream project of Shri krishna Sinha the first chief minister of Bihar. It was built in collaboration with the Soviet Union at a cost of Rs.49.4 crores and went on stream in July 1964. The initial capacity of 1 million tonnes per year was expanded to 3 million tonnes per year by 1969. The present capacity of this refinery is 6.100 million tonnes per year. Indian Oil Corporation has planned to expand its capacity from 6 million tonnes per year to 9 million tonnes per year at the cost of $1.94billion.
The Gujarat Refinery is an oil refinery located at Koyali, Vadodara District in Gujarat, Western India. It is the third largest refinery owned by Indian Oil Corporation after Paradip and Panipat Refinery. The refinery is currently under projected expansion to 18 million tonnes per year.
Haldia Refinery is an oil refinery operated by Indian Oil Corporation, located in Haldia city in the state of West Bengal. This refinery has a capacity of 8 million tonnes per year. For processing 2.5 MMTPA of Middle East crude, two sectors were commissioned in January 1975 - one for producing fuel products and the other for Lube base stocks. The fuel sector was built with French collaboration and the Lube sector with Romanian collaboration. The refining capacity of the Refinery was increased to 2.75 million tonnes per year in 1989 through debottlenecking measures. This refinery can produce fuel products like LPG, Naphtha, Motor Spirit, Mineral Turpentine Oil, Superior Kerosene, Aviation Turbine Fuel, High Speed Diesel, Jute Batching Oil.
Visakhapatnam Refinery, is one of the two oil refineries of HPCL in India, the other being Mumbai Refinery. This was one of the first major industries of Visakhapatnam and first oil refinery on the East Coast. After the nationalisation, HPCL has transformed itself into a mega Public Sector Undertaking and it is second largest integrated oil company in India.
Chennai Petroleum Corporation Limited (CPCL), formerly known as Madras Refineries Limited (MRL), is a subsidiary of Indian Oil Corporation Limited which is under the ownership of Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas of the Government of India. It is headquartered in Chennai, India. It was formed as a joint venture in 1965 between the Government of India (GOI), AMOCO and National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), having a shareholding in the ratio 74%: 13%: 13% respectively. From the grassroots stage CPCL Refinery was set up with an installed capacity of 2.5 million tonnes per year in a record time of 27 months at a cost of ₹430 million (US$5.4 million) without any time or cost overrun.
Kochi Refinery Limited (KRL) is a crude oil refinery in the city of Kochi in Kerala, India. It is the largest public sector refinery in India with a production capacity of 15.5 million tonnes per year. Formerly known as Cochin Refineries Limited and later renamed as Kochi Refineries Limited, it was acquired by Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited in the year 2006. The refinery is situated at Ambalamugal, around 12 km (7.5 mi) east of the city centre.
Merox is an acronym for mercaptan oxidation. It is a proprietary catalytic chemical process developed by UOP used in oil refineries and natural gas processing plants to remove mercaptans from LPG, propane, butanes, light naphthas, kerosene and jet fuel by converting them to liquid hydrocarbon disulfides.
The energy policy of India is to increase the locally produced energy in India and reduce energy poverty, with more focus on developing alternative sources of energy, particularly nuclear, solar and wind energy. India attained 63% overall energy self-sufficiency in 2017.
Corinth Refinery is an oil refining complex in Greece, the largest industrial complex in the country with a capacity of 380,000 barrels per day (60,000 m3/d), operated by Motor Oil Hellas.
The BPRefinery (Kent) was an oil refinery on the Isle of Grain in Kent. It was commissioned in 1953 and had a maximum processing capacity of 11 million tonnes of crude oil per year. It was decommissioned in August 1982.
Petroleum refining processes are the chemical engineering processes and other facilities used in petroleum refineries to transform crude oil into useful products such as liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), gasoline or petrol, kerosene, jet fuel, diesel oil and fuel oils.
The Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) is one of two crude oil refineries in Ghana.
Paradip Refinery is an oil refinery set up by Indian Oil Corporation in Paradip city in the state of Odisha. The installed capacity of refinery is 15 million tonnes per year. This refinery is capable to produce high yield of LPG and propylene. The refinery can produce various petroleum products like gasoline, diesel, kerosene, aviation turbine fuel, Propylene, Sulphur and Petroleum Coke. The refinery is also designed to produce total Premium quality Gasoline variants for export. This refinery is IndianOil’s first refinery with single Atmospheric Column for processing 15.0 Million Metric Tonnes Per Annum. The refinery is in a synergic partnership with the environment as this is a zero effluent discharge refinery and with strictly monitored and controlled stack emissions which are uplinked on real time basis to the server of Central Pollution Control Board.
The Kirishi-2 Oil Refinery will be Russia's first residual oil high conversion refinery to be opened in Kirishi, Russia in 2017.
Indian Oil Corporation Limited is an Indian central public sector undertaking under the ownership of the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Government of India. It is headquartered in New Delhi. It is a public sector undertaking whose operations are overseen by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas. Indian Oil is ranked 142nd on the Fortune Global 500 list of the world's biggest corporations as of 2022. It is the largest government owned oil producer in the country, with a net profit of $6.1 billion for the financial year 2020-21. As of 31 March 2021, Indian Oil's employee strength is 31,648, out of which 17,762 are executives and 13,876 non-executives, while 2,776 are women, comprising 8.77% of the total workforce.
The petroleum industry in India dates back to 1889 when the first oil deposits in the country were discovered near the town of Digboi in the state of Assam. The natural gas industry in India began in the 1960s with the discovery of gas fields in Assam and Maharashtra. As on 31 March 2018, India had estimated crude oil reserves of 594.49 million metric tonnes (Mt) and natural gas reserves of 1339.57 billion cubic metres of natural gas (BCM).
