| Crude oil blending is a very common practice in petroleum refineries, where the main focus is to minimize the total purchasing cost of the crude oils under specified blending oil properties. Crude oil blending results in the change of crude oil quality which has a significant impact on the energy consumption of furnaces during processing. Conceivably, the energy provided, mainly by burning fuels such as natural gas, fuel oil, and propane, will cause huge emissions of greenhouse gas. To reduce the environmental impact and economic cost, an energy and emission considered economic crude-oil blending analysis is presented in this paper.;The analysis includes four stages: steady state model development, data extraction from simulation, data fitting in emission model, and economic evaluation. With the help of the commercial simulator Aspen Hysys, the developed strategy addresses crude oil blending and processing issues in terms of production profitability, energy saving, and emission reduction, and then identifies an optimal crude oil blending and processing configuration to improve profitability, save energy, and reduce emission. A real case study is implemented to demonstrate the efficacy of the methodology.;On the other hand blending of different refined, intermediate, or finished products in a petroleum refinery is also a very common practice, where the main purpose is to maximize the profit by reducing the giveaway of the final product of desired specification and also to save money by avoiding the reprocessing of some semi-finished or finished products which are off-specs. In order to overcome the problem of trial and error adjustment of the streams for blending, a diesel property prediction model is developed from which an optimized quantity of particular stream is identified to mix or meet the desired specification of diesel fuel.;However, it must be noted that the diesel combustion in internal combustion engines has a significant impact on air quality in terms of NOx emission; therefore, the blending model is linked directly to the NOx emission in order to estimate the emission of diesel fuel with required quality and quantity. In order to meet the current scenario, the economic consideration is taken into the account and the optimization is done using an excel solver with profit maximization as the objective function; subject to constraints. The efficacy of the methodology is demonstrated by a case study. |
