Petrochemical refinery

“ Below, there is a refinery. It is for the establishment alone; but, just like that we have already described—only on a smaller scale. First, the rolling-mill shows us its powers by a speedy experiment;—it flattens a halfpenny, making it oblong at the first turn, and, by degrees, with the help of some annealing in the furnace, drawing it out into a long ribbon of shining copper, which is rolled up, tied with a wire, and presented to us as a curiosity. Next, we see coils of thick round wire, of a dirty white, which we can hardly believe to be gold. ”

“ Nature certainly spared no effort to bring petroleum into general notice ages before James Young manufactured paraffine-oil in Scotland or Samuel M. Kier fired-up his miniature refinery at Pittsburg. North and south, east and west the presence of the greasy staple was manifested positively and extensively. ”

“ EXCLUSION.— The term “planned refinery outage” does not include any necessary and unplanned removal of a refinery, or any unit of a refinery, from service as a result of a component failure, safety hazard, emergency, or action reasonably anticipated to be necessary to prevent such events. (3) REFINED PETROLEUM PRODUCT.— The term “refined petroleum product” means any gasoline, diesel fuel, fuel oil, lubricating oil, liquid petroleum gas, or other petroleum distillate that is produced through the refining or processing of crude oil or an oil derived from tar sands, shale, or coal. ”

“ It has been 30 years since a new refinery was built in our Nation, and lawsuits and red tape have made it extremely costly to expand or modify existing refineries. The result is that America now imports millions of barrels of fully refined gasoline from abroad. ”

“ At the start the difficulty of getting the apparatus for a refinery to the creek had been so enormous that the bulk of the crude had been driven to the nearest manufacturing cities—Erie, Pittsburgh, Cleveland. Much had gone to the seaboard, too, and Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore were all doing considerable refining. There was always a strong feeling in the Oil Regions that the refining should be done at home. Before the railroads came the most heroic efforts were made again and again to get in the necessary machinery. ”

“ Large-scale units, representing heavy capital investments, are essential in electrolytic refining. A small refinery cannot compete successfully with large ones. The average important copper mine produces enough ore to make about 25,000,000 pounds a year, whereas the average smelter produces three or four times as much blister or casting copper, and the average electrolytic refinery can produce over 250,000,000 pounds annually. ”

“ Affiant says the said Standard Oil Company owns and operates its refineries at Cleveland, Ohio, and its refinery at Bayonne, New Jersey; that it has no other refineries nor any interest in any other refineries, nor does the Standard Oil Company operate or control in the United States any other refineries of crude petroleum ”

“ The gasolene is used for making gas. The naphtha and benzine destined for the market are kept separate, but sometimes they are further treated at the refinery, and are then run together, and sent to the naphtha-works with a density of 68° to 70° B. Here they are treated in iron stills of 200 to 600 barrels capacity, heated by coal. The vapors are condensed in a series of three worms, and the operation is so managed that the various products are obtained of the required density. ”

“ It has approximately 735 tank cars, operates about 470 miles of pipe line, including adequate facilities for the transportation of crude oil from the fields to its refinery, and has about 256 wholesale and 263 retail gasoline stations in Oklahoma and other states which are supplied from its refinery. At the refinery it has gastight steel storage tanks with a total capacity of about 645,000 barrels. ”

“ The successful introduction of the internal combustion engine, however, completely changed the aspect of petroleum refining, and the desire became general, not to see how little motor spirit could be produced, but to perfect methods by which the yield of the benzene series of hydrocarbons should be as large as possible. Even to-day progress is still being recorded in this direction, and each American refiner is vying with his neighbour as to how far that output of gasoline, as it is there called, can be increased. ”

“ As may be imagined, the industry of petroleum refining has had to adapt itself to the altered conditions of to-day. For instance, prior to the advent of the internal combustion engine, which now is responsible for such a wide application of motor spirit, the demand for this, the lightest product of petroleum distillation, was non-existent. ”

“ The petroleum industry, in many of its aspects, is the product of development. This statement is true, not only as respects its vast magnitude, but also as pertaining to many of its details. The process of cracking had been employed in treating the distillates from coal before petroleum became an article of commerce; yet petroleum, for a number of years following its discovery in large quantities, was uniformly distilled into naphtha, normal burning-oil, and paraffine-oil. ”

“ Cracked oils of good quality are nothing new, but I have never seen them made by one distillation and one treatment. Cracked oils should be finished by distillation, not treatment. A second distillation would enable the refiner to first remove the two volatile products of cracking and the heavy, uncracked portion of the paraffine-oil, besides destroying the sulphur compounds. But such a technology would so far increase the cost of the oil that those employing it could not compete in the market with those who did not, except by virtue of the superior quality of their oil. ”

“ The polystyrene resins, for example, are made by polymerizing styrene or vinyl benzene. Although basically from ethylene and benzene, vinyl benzene may be formed in several ways. Ethylene is found in the gases from the destructive distillation of coal but is obtained commercially by cracking natural gas or petroleum. Styrene, found already formed in the light oil fractions from coal tar, causes gum-forming in motor benzol and certain industrial gases. ”

“ The refining of crude oil as it is produced from the earth, consists in the classification of its various hydrocarbons by means of fractional distillation, into the various products which so largely enter into our commercial and domestic life of to-day. The refined products, in the order in which they are received by distillation, are: motor spirit, illuminating oils, solar oils, lubricating oils, fuel oils, residuum, etc.—the first mentioned being the lightest and the last the heaviest in specific gravity. ”

“ The refining operations consist of three distinct branches: (1) the distillation, (2) the extracting of paraffin and refining, and (3) the chemical treatment. When only a small percentage of the low boiling fractions 55 56 has to be removed from the crude oil, the process is known as “topping,” and a convenient form of apparatus for the purpose is the tower still. This consists of a vertical cylinder fitted with perforated plates resting at intervals on pipes through which superheated steam travels. ”

“ Coal, as is well known, yields a great variety of substances, many of which are essential to synthetic resin manufacture. Benzene is the starting point for synthetic phenol; naphthalene is used to make phthalic anhydride and maleic anhydride; coke is converted to calcium carbide, which in turn yields acetylene, acetic acid, and many other synthetics; carbon monoxide which is converted to methanol and formaldehyde; and the natural tar acids such as phenol, the cresols, and the xylenols. Limestone is a component of calcium carbide, and salt yields needed alkalies and acids. ”

“ The two chief uses of the distillates from crude petroleum are for illumination and lubrication, but the various fractions in many cases have special applications. Rhigolene is used as a local anaesthetic; petroleum ether is employed as a solvent for caoutchouc, fatty oils, and plant principles, and for carbureting air in gas machines; gasoline is employed in the extraction of oil from oil seeds, in carbureting coal gas, in gasoline lamps, stoves, and plumbers' lamps. ”

“ The entire product was exported.—No manufactured articles put upon the market vary more in quality than the products obtained from petroleum, especially kerosene. While new applications are constantly being found in the arts for the various grades of naphtha, still the purposes for which it can be used are comparatively few. Vast quantities of it have been burned under stills, and in some localities have been thrown away or sold at the purchaser's price. As a result, refiners of oil constantly labor under the temptation to throw the largest possible amount into the illuminating oil. ”

“ The old method of determining the amount of paraffine in petroleum was to carry out the refining process on a small scale; that is, to distill the residue from the kerosene oils to coking, chill out the paraffine, press it thoroughly between filter paper, and weigh the residue. The sources of error in this procedure are manifold; the principal one is the solubility of paraffine in oils, which depends upon the character of both the paraffine and the oil, and also upon the temperature. ”

“ Various arrangements have been proposed and patented for the continuous distillation of petroleum, in which crude oil is supplied to a range of stills a fast as the distillates pass off. The system is largely employed in Russia, and its use has been frequently attempted in the United States, but the results have not been satisfactory, on account, it is said, of the much greater quantity of dissolved gas contained in the American oil, the larger proportion of kerosene which such oil yields, and the less fluid character of the residue. ”

“ This process is termed destructive distillation, and the property displayed by coal is common to all vegetable and animal substances; but only coal and petroleum have been used economically in the production of illuminating gas on an extensive scale. The distillation is the most important operation in the manufacture, but it is necessary to remove from the gas, before it is fit for burning, the condensible vapors, as tar, water, etc. ”

“ Kerosene oil, Refined petroleum, Paraffin oil. Most of the burning oils now in the market are derived from American petroleum. That obtained from natural petroleum is now manufactured solely in America. The native petroleums vary greatly in properties, and numerous methods of refining are employed by the manufacturers. The Canadian petroleum contains sulphuretted hydrogen, which imparts to it a very disagreeable smell, and is difficult of removal. Some make use of both acids and alkalies, others employ alkalies alone, and steam is applied at various degrees of heat. ”

“ The raw petroleum of different localities differs in each case in the amount of solid paraffins and olefines dissolved in the liquid paraffins. Other substances also are dissolved in it in variable amount—such as benzene, acetylene, camphene and naphthalene. The fact that the oil, when reached by a boring, is often found to be under a considerable pressure, so that it rises and flows from the surface of the well, or even may shoot up as a great fountain, is an important feature in the oil-seeking industry, though the supply depends largely on pumping and not necessarily on natural flow. ”

“ It is true hundreds of inferior refineries have been dismantled, not because they were frozen out by a crushing monopoly, but because they lacked requisite facilities. The refineries in vogue when the Standard was organized could not stay in business a week, if resurrected and revived. A team of pack-mules might as well try to compete with the New York Central Railroad as these early refineries to meet the requirements of the petroleum-trade at its present stage of perfection. ”

“ Just as the mechanical skill of the engineer enables him to construct an engine out of the raw material iron, which is extracted from its ore, and converted into steel by chemical processes, so the skill of the chemist enables him to build up complex colouring-matters, &c., out of the raw materials furnished by tar, which is obtained from coal by chemical decomposition.
The illuminating gas which is obtained from coal by destructive distillation consists chiefly of hydrogen and gaseous hydrocarbons, the most abundant of the latter being marsh gas. ”

“ At every stage of its journey from the hole in the ground to the abode of the purchaser of kerosene, oil is handled with a view to the best results. The pipe-line relieves the producer from worry and fatigue and a large outlay, furnishing him prompt service and a cash market at his own door every business-day in the year. It enables the refiner to fill the consumer’s lamp at a trifling margin above the price of crude. For seventy cents a barrel—less than half it cost formerly to haul it a mile—the line collects oil from the wells, pumps it into the trunk-lines and delivers it in New York. ”

“ Some idea of the expansion in production of these raw materials whose principal use is in synthetic resins may be had by comparing the output in 1923 of tar acids, formaldehyde, phthalic anhydride, maleic anhydride, urea, vinyl acetate, and vinyl chloride, which amounted to 35 million pounds, with the output of 270 million pounds in 1936. The manufacture of these materials is largely by coal-tar distilling companies and makers of chemicals. ”