PETROLEUM INDUSTRY

-

 


The petroleum industry, also known as the oil industry or the oil patch, includes the global processes of exploration, extraction, refining, transporting (often by oil tankers and pipelines), and marketing of petroleum products. The largest volume products of the industry are fuel oil and gasoline (petrol). Petroleum is also the raw material for many chemical products, including pharmaceuticals, solvents, fertilizers, pesticides, synthetic fragrances, and plastics. The extreme monetary value of oil and its products has led to it being known as "black gold". The industry is usually divided into three major components: upstream, midstream, and downstream. 

Now, lets take a look at some prominent reactors used in Petroleum industry.

Trickle Bed Reactor (TBR):

A trickle-bed reactor (TBR) is a chemical reactor that uses the downward movement of a liquid and the downward (co-current) or upward (counter-current) movement of gas over a packed bed of (catalyst) particles. It is considered to be the simplest reactor type for performing catalytic reactions where a gas and liquid (normally both reagents) are present in the reactor and accordingly it is extensively used in processing plants. Typical examples are liquid-phase hydrogenation, hydrodesulfurization, and hydrodenitrogenation in refineries (three phase hydrotreater) and oxidation of harmful chemical compounds in wastewater streams or of cumene in the cumene process.

A typical trickle bed reactor consists of a tubular tank with a sieve plate or wire mesh near its bottom to support the packed bed, and inlets and outlets for the liquid stream at the top and bottom of the reactor, respectively. The gas inlet can be located at the top or bottom, depending on the process, with the outlet located at the opposite end. A bubble cap, sieve plate distributor, or fine layer of non-reacting particles are placed at the top of the bed to ensure a uniform liquid distribution throughout the bed.

A large factor in the overall performance of a trickle bed reactor is the type of  packed bed used. The configuration of the bed, whether it be random packing or structured packing, as well as the shape of packing used, affect properties such as pressure drop and the catalyst coating area.


                                     The video simplifies the understanding of TBRs

Trickle bed reactors play a large role in hydroprocessing in the petroleum industry to generate cleaner fuels. Liquid petroleum flows with high-pressure hydrogen gas at relatively low speeds to prolong the residence time within the system. Reactions at the catalyst surface remove pollutants such as  sulfur and nitrogen from the petroleum. These are typically very large reactors that correspond to the large production scales in industry.

Trickle bed reactors are also useful in some wastewater treatment processes. These reactors are used to oxidize toxic phenol in wastewater to non-toxic carbon dioxide and water. Oxidation reactions are very exothermic, so this application can lead to issues of heat transfer and safety in the system.

Slurry Bed Reactor:

Slurry reactors are three-phase reactors, meaning they can be used to react solids, liquids, and gases simultaneously. They usually consist of a catalyst (solid) suspended in a liquid, through which a gas is bubbled. They can operate in either semi-batch or continuous mode.

Inside the reactor are catalyst pellets suspended in a liquid. Gas reactant is bubbled into the reactor. The gas is absorbed into the liquid from the bubble surface. The absorbed gas then diffuses through the liquid to the catalyst surface, at which point it diffuses into the catalyst pellet and the reaction takes place.

The diagram below shows the synthesis of methanol in a slurry batch reactor. Syngas enters at the bottom of the reactor into heated mineral oil. The gas then reacts with the assistance of suspended catalyst to form the methanol product. Unreacted gas and methanol vapor exit though the top of the reactor. Once out of the reactor, the methanol is condensed to a liquid.



Slurry reactors are most frequently used when a liquid reactant must be contacted with a solid catalyst, and when a reaction has a high heat of reaction. They may be used in such applications as hydrogenation, oxidation, hydroformation, and ethynylation. It is also used to convert natural gas into GTL (gas - to - liquid) diesel.









Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Overview of Chemical Industry

-
Image
   What is Chemical Engineering? Before getting into our mainstream topic, let's try to understand what is chemical engineering. There are many definitions given by great scholars to this field, however first lets start with the simple one. Basically, it is the process of producing chemicals on LARGE SCALE . Remember the term LARGE SCALE is very important. Though this is not the technical definition, it’s the easiest one and can be understood by anyone. Now, what distinguishes a chemist from a Chemical Engineer? Chemist performs the experiment on small scale in a lab. That is, he will take ‘x’ grams of A and ‘y’ grams of B and mix it in a test tube and may be he will shake it and heat it on a bunsen burner.  Now, if we want to produce the same chemical on Large Scale then we need to take ‘x’ and ‘y’ in tones and say we take a batch reactor. Now how to shake this big rector? That’s where CH Engineer comes in context. It’s engineer’s duty to find what to do now....
Read more

FERTILIZER INDUSTRY

-
Image
Fertilizers are substances that supply one or more of the chemicals required for plant growth. Fertilizers can be both organic and inorganic. As per industry experts it is said that there are sixteen elements that are absolutely necessary for plant growth. Out of these sixteen 9 elements are required in large quantities while the other seven are needed in smaller amounts. Since agriculture is a very important sector it goes without saying that the fertilizer industry is one which the Indian economy cannot do without. The fertilizer industry in India is extremely vital as it manufactures some of the most important raw materials required for crop production. The primary objective of this industry is to ensure the inflow of both primary and secondary elements required for crop production in the desirable quantities. The success of the agricultural sector in India is largely dependent on the fertilizer industry. The benchmark that the food industry in India has set is mainly due to the man...
Read more

Pharmaceuticals and Food Industry

-
Image
  Pharmaceutical Industry: Pharmaceutical industry , the discovery, development, and manufacture of drugs and medications ( pharmaceuticals) by public and private organizations. The modern era of the pharmaceutical industry—of isolation and purification of  compounds ,  chemical synthesis , and computer-aided drug design—is considered to have begun in the 19th century, thousands of years after  intuition  and trial and error led humans to believe that plants, animals, and minerals contained medicinal properties. The unification of research in the 20th century in fields such as  chemistry  and  physiology  increased the understanding of basic drug-discovery processes. Identifying new drug targets, attaining regulatory approval from government agencies, and refining techniques in drug discovery and development are among the challenges that face the pharmaceutical  industry  today. The continual evolution and advancement of the pharmac...
Read more