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Oil Products New Orleans
Oil Products New Orleans
Anything that goes into a refinery and does not come out as a product such as gasoline or diesel ends up as pollution. According to a landmark study, 99.7 percent by weight of crude oil arriving at Amoco's Yorktown, Virginia refinery was converted to product or fuel for the refinery; and only 0.3 percent of the oil was released to the environment as pollution in one form or another.
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Oil Products New Orleans
Anything that goes into a refinery and does not come out as a product such as gasoline or diesel ends up as pollution. According to a landmark study, 99.7 percent by weight of crude oil arriving at Amoco's Yorktown, Virginia refinery was converted to product or fuel for the refinery; and only 0.3 percent of the oil was released to the environment as pollution in one form or another. Since an average-size refinery processes over 90,000 barrels of oil daily, that 0.3 percent can result in the release of more than 11,000 gallons of oil to air, land, or water every day -- and that does not count releases of any of the other chemicals used in refineries.
According to federal right-to-know data, in 1997 alone, over 100 million pounds of toxic substances from U.S. refineries were reported released to the environment or transferred to other facilities for recycling, treatment, or disposal.
There are four primary activities that occur in refinery processes:
Separating hydrocarbons (e.g., distillation)
Creating hydrocarbons (e.g., cracking/coking, alkylation and reforming)
Blending hydrocarbons
Removing impurities (e.g., sulfur removal)
Different refineries perform some or all of these four activities, depending on the raw materials used and the products created. Secondary refinery activities include maintaining refinery equipment, such as prevention of corrosion and freezing, painting, and cleaning.
In the United States, over 170 oil refineries make a variety of energy and chemical products from crude oil. Crude oil is a mixture of thousands of different hydrocarbons (compounds of hydrogen and carbon), as well as such undesirable impurities as sulfur, nitrogen, and metals. Refineries are designed to maximize the creation of particular products while removing many of the impurities. Crude oil is refined into the following products:
Gasoline 45%
Distillate fuel oil (e.g., home heating oil, diesel) 21%
Kerosene-type jet fuel 9%
Residuel fuel oil (e.g., industrial fuels) 5%
Liquified petroleum gases (e.g., propane, butane) 4%
Still gas 4%
Coke 4%
Asphalt and road oil 3%
Petrochemical feedstocks 3%
Lubricants 1%
Other 1%
Kerosene 0.5%
(Data compiled from the American Petroleum
Institute at, http://www.api.org/edu/factsoil.htm)
The simplified process descriptions in this guide do not reflect the complexity of a modern refinery. They do, however, provide some background for understanding the pollution prevention measures described. Process descriptions in this guide draw from William L. Leffler's useful book Petroleum Refining for the Non-Technical Person (PennWell Books, Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1979).
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