Exergy evaluation of petroleum production and refining processes

Abstract

This chapter deals with the application of exergy analysis to primary and refining petroleum processes due to the important exergy consumption they require. It describes the exergy and thermoeconomic analysis of an offshore platform. The comparative performance of two artificial lift systems is presented and discussed in detail through a scenario of 25 years of operation. A utilities plant of a petroleum refinery is studied in order to characterize its exergy and cost interactions with the hydrocarbons derived production processes, such as the combined distillation, fluid catalytic cracking (FCC), delayed coking, hydrotreating (HDT), hydrogen generation, and sulfur recovery. The hydrogen production in a petroleum refinery to purify diesel oil, based on the steam reforming of natural gas, is analyzed in detail to evaluate its thermodynamic performance as well as to describe the cost formation of the produced hydrogen.