Oil, Gas and Petrochemistry

Petroleum processing plants produce olefins and aromatics by fluid catalytic cracking of petroleum fractions. Compound plants take gaseous petrol fluids from a gas handling plant and utilize a steam splitting procedure to create olefins. Aromatics are delivered by reactant changing of naphtha. A chemical plant is an industrial process plant that manufactures chemicals, usually on a large scale. The general objective of a chemical plant is to create new material wealth via the chemical or biological transformation and or separation of materials. Petrochemical plants are usually located adjacent to an oil refinery to minimize transportation costs for the feedstock’s produced by the refinery. Specialty chemical and fine chemical plants are usually much smaller and not as sensitive to location. Tools have been developed for converting a base project cost from one geographic location to another. A chemical plant commonly has usually large vessels or sections called units or lines that are interconnected by piping or other material-moving equipment which can carry streams of material. Such material streams can include fluids or sometimes solids or mixtures such as slurries. An overall chemical process is commonly made up of steps called unit operations which occur in the individual units. A raw material going into a chemical process or plant as input to be converted into a product is commonly called a feedstock, or simply feed.

 Petroleum refining processes are the chemical engineering processes and other facilities used in petroleum refineries to transform crude oil into useful products such as liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), gasoline or petrol, kerosene, jet fuel, diesel oil and fuel oils. Petroleum refineries are very large industrial complexes that involve many different processing units and auxiliary facilities such as utility units and storage tanks. Each refinery has its own unique arrangement and combination of refining processes largely determined by the refinery location, desired products and economic considerations. Crude Oil Distillation unit, Naphtha hydrotreater unit, Catalytic reforming unit, Isomerization unit, Distillate hydrotreater, Fluid catalytic cracking, Hydrocracker unit, Visbreaker unit are some the processing units used for the refining process.

On burning petrochemicals release nitrogen, ash, sulfur and carbon into the atmosphere, contributing to pollution and smog, when these chemicals combine with water vapor, they can cause acid rain. Over the years there have been increased concerns over the environmental effects of the petroleum industry. The environmental impacts of petroleum are mainly refusal. This is due to the toxicity of petroleum which contributes to air pollution, acid rain etc. which leads to illness in humans. Oil spills cause wide damage in the marine environment. Greenhouse gases produced by the burning of petrochemicals, which includes carbon dioxide, warm up the Earth by trapping heat in the atmosphere.

Different Instruments are in use for the monitoring and control the process plant in oil, gas and petroleum industries. They includes sensing devices to measure process parameters such as temperature, pressure, liquid level, flow, velocity, composition, density, weight; and mechanical and electrical parameters such as vibration, position, current and voltage, Equipment’s used are Oil treatment plants, Module-Type Formation Pressure Maintenance Plant, Oil-heating units, Mobile Nitrogen Production System, Mobile Gas Pumping System, Oil desalting plants, Gas Separators, Oil and gas production and transport equipment, Drilling Equipment, Equipment for offshore platforms, Fuel storage tanks, Rotating Equipment’s like these many equipment’s are used for different purposes in the oil gas and petroleum field.

Safety is now the main criteria in the oil and gas industry. Workplace safety and more advanced technologies to monitor and prevent injuries and accidents is mandatory, the rate of injury was down to 1.8 per 100 workers in 2012, according to the Petroleum Institutes. Oil and gas well drilling and servicing activities involve many different types of equipment and materials. Recognizing and controlling hazards is critical to preventing injuries and deaths.

There are different processing units used in the Refineries. Each of these plays a major role in the overall process of converting the crude oil into finished petroleum products. The Processing units involved are Separation units, Conversion units, supporting process units, treating units etc. The typical process units involved are crude desalting, Atmospheric distillation, Visbreaker, Hydrocracker, Thermal cracker and many.

Enhanced Oil Recovery is the process of increasing the amount of oil that can be recovered from an oil reservoir, usually by injecting some substances into an existing oil well to increase pressure and decrease the viscosity of the oil with a conventional oil well, natural pressure in the reservoir that pushes the oil to the surface or a pump is used to create and maintain the pressure. There are several different methods of Enhanced Oil Recovery including Thermal recovery, Gas injection, Chemical injection etc.

Offshore oil and gas production, which involves extraction of oil and gas from beneath the sea, is a critical component of the world's energy supply. It requires the use of highly sophisticated technology and high attention to the related environmental impacts. Offshore gas is the drilling and extraction of natural gas from down the floor of oceans. Offshore production began in the 1950’s in shallow waters around 200 meters deep. Platforms were erected on the seabed, supported by metal or concrete legs. Following the 1973 oil crisis, intensive production began in North Sea. Half of the 17,000 platforms in use today are fixed structures anchored to the seabed. Deep offshore production can results in number of challenges.

Natural gas is a byproduct of producing oil. Exploration for natural gas begins with geologists observing and examining the surface structure of the earth, and determining the areas where it is geologically likely that petroleum or gas deposits might exist. Natural gas wells are of different types and they include oil wells, gas wells, and condensate wells. Natural gas is known as sweet gas when it is relatively free of hydrogen sulfide. Natural gas, or any other gas mixture, containing significant quantities of hydrogen sulfide, carbon dioxide or acidic gases, is called acid gas.

Oil well is a boring in the Earth that is designed to bring petroleum, oil, hydrocarbons to the surface. Usually some natural gas is released along with the oil. A well that is designed to produce only gas may be termed a gas well. It involves Drilling, completion and production. Wells are of different types based upon the production of a substance, and they can be located on land or offshore.

Drilling indicates the total complex of operations that are necessary to construct wells of circular section applying excavation techniques. The planning of Drilling involve Well concept, well proposal, Data acquisition & analysis, well design, drilling program

The oil and gas equipment has been classified as static and rotating equipment, these equipment’s are utilized across all verticals of the hydrocarbons industry: upstream, midstream, and downstream. Within static equipment, we have considered valves, heat exchangers, furnaces, and boilers. Valves are vital for controlling the flow of crude oil or natural gas in oil and gas infrastructure such as wellheads, pipelines, and refineries. Boilers are mostly utilized in the refining industry for steam generation or cooling. In refineries, steam is mostly utilized for steam stripping, steam distillation, process heating, and vacuum distillation.

Conventional Gas refers to natural gas that can be produced from the reservoirs using some techniques like traditional drilling, pumping and the compression techniques. Natural gas is referred as conventional when it can be extracted from the Earth either through naturally occurring pressure, or pumping mechanisms. This is opposed to unconventional gas sources like shale gas, tight gas, and coal bed methane. Conventional gas tends to be less expensive and complex to extract than unconventional gas due to the usual nature of production techniques.  Historically low natural gas prices have led to the popularity of its use for the power and heating.

Fossil fuels, as originally derived from the organic matter, and have been created over many millennia through the biological and geological processes and are very essentially non-renewable. The energy biomass produces can be converted into electricity, heat or biofuels. Bioenergy can be as simple, complex as an advanced second generation liquid biofuel. Bioenergy is the most widely used renewable energy in the world, providing around 10% of the world's primary energy supplies, mostly as thermal energy for heating purposes and cooking.

The terms upstream and downstream oil and gas production refer to oil or Gas Company’s. Oil and gas companies are usually divided into one of three groups, upstream, downstream, and midstream. Some companies are considered to be "integrated" as they combine the functions of two or three of the groups. Upstream oil and gas production is done by the companies who identify, extract, or produce the raw materials. Downstream oil and gas production companies are closer to the end consumer, Many of the products that we use every day comes directly from the downstream production, including natural gas, gasoline, diesel, lubricants, pesticides, heating oil, pharmaceuticals etc.

Chemical Reaction Engineering and Catalysis is the field that studies the rates and mechanisms of chemical reactions and the design of the reactors in which they take place. Every industrial chemical process is designed to produce economically a desired product from a variety of starting materials through a succession of treatment steps.

Thermodynamics in chemical engineering are to determine the states of phase and chemical equilibrium necessary for the design of separations processes (i.e., distillation, absorption, extraction, etc.) and chemical reactors, and in determining the thermodynamic efficiency of chemical processes. Change of state of a thermodynamic system results from existence of gradients of various types within or across its boundary. Thus, a gradient of pressure results in momentum or convective mass transport. Temperature gradients result in heat transfer, while a gradient of concentration promotes diffusive mass transfer. Thus, if internal or cross-boundary gradients of any form as above exist with respect to a thermodynamic system it will undergo change of state in time.

The driving force for mass transfer is typically a difference in chemical potential, when it can be defined, though other thermodynamic gradients may couple to the flow of mass and drive it as well. A chemical species moves from areas of high chemical potential to areas of low chemical potential. Mass transfer is used by different scientific disciplines for different processes and mechanisms. Mass transfer occurs in many processes, such as absorption, evaporation, drying, Crystallization, Membrane filtration, and Distillation. Distillation is a widely used method for separating mixtures based on differences in the conditions required to change the phase of components of the mixture. Absorption is the process in which a fluid is dissolved by a liquid or a solid. Adsorption is the process in which atoms, ions or molecules from a substance adhere to a surface of the adsorbent.

Electrochemical Engineering combines the study of heterogeneous charge transfer at electrode interphases with the development of practical materials and procedures. Fundamental considerations include electrode materials and the kinetics of redox species. Electrochemical Engineering is applied in industrial water electrolysis, electrolysis, electro synthesis, electroplating, fuel cells, flow batteries, decontamination of industrial effluents, electro refining, electroextraction.

Polymer Science Engineering deals with the analyses of polymer materials. A Polymer is a large molecule or a macro molecule which essentially is a combination of large number of sub units. The word polymer in Greek means “many parts”. It also deals with the chemical synthesis, Polymer Structures and chemical properties of polymers which were esteemed by Hermann Staudinger as macromolecules but also covers other aspects of Novel synthetic and polymerization methods, Reactions and chemistry of polymers, properties and characterization of polymers, Synthesis and application of polymer bio conjugation and Polymer Nano composites and architectures. Polymers are a highly diverse class of materials which are available in all fields of engineering from avionics through biomedical applications, drug delivery system, bio-sensor devices, cosmetics etc. and the improvement and usage of these depends on polymer applications and data obtained through rigorous testing. The application of polymeric materials and their composites are still increasing quickly due to their affordable average cost and ease of manufacture.