Oil refinery
[9][8] Between 512 and 518, in the late Northern Wei dynasty, the Chinese geographer, writer and politician Li Daoyuan introduced the process of refining oil into various lubricants in his famous work Commentary on the Water Classic.
The workshop was one of the world's earliest oil refining factories where thousands of people worked to produce Chinese oil-powered weaponry.
However, the modern history of the petroleum industry is said to have begun in 1846 when Abraham Gessner of Nova Scotia, Canada devised a process to produce kerosene from coal.
In the early twentieth century, the introduction of the internal combustion engine and its use in automobiles created a market for gasoline that was the impetus for fairly rapid growth of the petroleum industry.
[20] Polish pharmacist and inventor Ignacy Łukasiewicz established an oil refinery in Jasło, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in Poland) in 1854.
The Ploiești refineries, after being taken over by Nazi Germany, were bombed in the 1943 Operation Tidal Wave by the Allies, during the Oil Campaign of World War II.
The driving force for that growth in technology and in the number and size of refineries worldwide was the growing demand for automotive gasoline and aircraft fuel.
In 1982 (the earliest data provided), the United States operated 301 refineries with a combined capacity of 17.9 million barrels (2,850,000 m3) of crude oil each calendar day.
Instead, the hundreds of different hydrocarbon molecules in crude oil are separated in a refinery into components that can be used as fuels, lubricants, and feedstocks in petrochemical processes that manufacture such products as plastics, detergents, solvents, elastomers, and fibers such as nylon and polyesters.
[28] Oil can be used in a variety of ways because it contains hydrocarbons of varying molecular masses, forms and lengths such as paraffins, aromatics, naphthenes (or cycloalkanes), alkenes, dienes, and alkynes.
The differences in the structure of these molecules account for their varying physical and chemical properties, and it is this variety that makes crude oil useful in a broad range of several applications.
Smaller molecules such as isobutane and propylene or butylenes can be recombined to meet specific octane requirements by processes such as alkylation, or more commonly, dimerization.
The crude sulfur contaminant is transformed to hydrogen sulfide via catalytic hydrodesulfurization and removed from the product stream via amine gas treating.
According to the composition of the crude oil and depending on the demands of the market, refineries can produce different shares of petroleum products.
These require blending various feedstocks, mixing appropriate additives, providing short-term storage, and preparation for bulk loading to trucks, barges, product ships, and railcars.
The refining process releases a number of different chemicals into the atmosphere (see AP 42 Compilation of Air Pollutant Emission Factors) and a notable odor normally accompanies the presence of a refinery.
[62][63] In California's Contra Costa County and Solano County, a shoreline necklace of refineries, built in the early 20th century before this area was populated, and associated chemical plants are adjacent to urban areas in Richmond, Martinez, Pacheco, Concord, Pittsburg, Vallejo and Benicia, with occasional accidental events that require "shelter in place" orders to the adjacent populations.
[65] Modern petroleum refining involves a complicated system of interrelated chemical reactions that produce a wide variety of petroleum-based products.
[68] The equipment and monitoring required to ensure the proper progression of these processes is complex, and has evolved through the advancement of the scientific field of petroleum engineering.
[71][72] Through the advancement of technical chemical and petroleum engineering, the vast majority of these processes are automated and enclosed, thus greatly reducing the potential health impact to workers.
[73] However, depending on the specific process in which a worker is engaged, as well as the particular method employed by the refinery in which he/she works, significant health hazards remain.
Given the highly automated and technically advanced nature of modern petroleum refineries, nearly all processes are contained within engineering controls and represent a substantially decreased risk of exposure to workers compared to earlier times.
[73] However, certain situations or work tasks may subvert these safety mechanisms, and expose workers to a number of chemical (see table above) or physical (described below) hazards.
[78][79] Examples of these scenarios include: A 2021 systematic review associated working in the petrochemical industry with increased risk of various cancers, such as mesothelioma.
The majority of the gaseous production of BTX occurs during tank cleaning and fuel transfer, which causes offgassing of these chemicals into the air.
[96] Workers are at risk of physical injuries due to a large number of high-powered machines in the relatively close proximity of the oil refinery.
[115] Regular evaluation of workers' auditory capacity and faithful use of properly vetted hearing protection are essential parts of such programs.
[78] More generally, all personnel in operating areas should use appropriate hearing and vision protection, avoid clothes made of flammable material (nylon, Dacron, acrylic, or blends), and full-length pants and sleeves.
[126] Below is a list of the most common regulations referenced in petroleum refinery safety citations issued by OSHA:[127] Corrosion of metallic components is a major factor of inefficiency in the refining process.
Offline checks measure corrosion after it has occurred, telling the engineer when equipment must be replaced based on the historical information they have collected.
