10.2.1 Oil
Crude petroleum is refined into many products, primarily gasoline, jet, diesel,
fuel oil, and lubricants. In the refining of crude to produce finished fuels,
5-10% of the oil is consumed during processing in a typical refinery. Potential
exists in some refineries to improve efficiency (Phylipsen et al., 1998) and
thereby reduce energy consumption in the process by up to 28% (Larsen, 1990).
Among the measures and technologies to improve energy efficiency in refining
are:
- Dissemination of "best practices", such as improved operating
procedures and strategies to bring low-efficiency refineries up to the level
of high-efficiency refineries.
- Use of newer more energy-efficient technologies, such as catalytic dewaxing,
membrane separations, supercritical solvent extraction, simulated moving bed
chromatographic separations, moving bed naphtha reforming, heat integration,
co-generation, and advanced control and real-time optimisation systems.
- The greatest potential to reduce GHG emissions in the oil-producing sector
is to mitigate the release of GHGs produced as a byproduct of oil production.
These are mainly CO2 and CH4.
Methods to mitigate CO2 and CH4
are discussed below.
