Chemical Engineering May 2020 - 16

INNOVATION AND DIGITALIZATION
As refiners try to weather the current public health crisis along with the rest of the world, they
are also looking to the future. And a big part of what will shape the future is innovation. A few
recent developments on that front include advanced catalysts, R&D capability and digitalization.
Crude laboratory. In January of this year, Clariant Refinery Services (Houston, Tex.; www.
clariant.com) opened a new state-of-the-art crude and fuel oil laboratory that focuses on applications
for transport and storage. Based in Bradford, U.K., the laboratory supports a highly
experienced technical services team equipped to address multiple challenges experienced
by refineries, storage terminals, pipeline providers and logistic companies around the world,
Clariant says.
The new laboratory has a wide selection of testing regimes and modern methods of crude
oil analysis and performance testing. One focus on the facility will be to identify and develop
new and customized pour-point depressant (PPD) solutions for the downstream and midstream
sectors. Researchers at the laboratory have already developed PPD products and
fuel stabilizer solutions specific to the challenges presented by the International Maritime
Organization (IMO; London, U.K.; www.imo.org) 2020 regulations, limiting marine fuels' sulfur
content to 0.5% from the previous limit of 3.5%.
FCC catalyst. BASF SE (Ludwigshafen, Germany; www.basf.com) launched Fourtune, a
new fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) catalyst product for gasoil feedstock. The catalyst is designed
to deliver superior butylene over propylene selectivity, while maintaining catalyst activity
and performance.
Commercial trials of Fourtune have confirmed its ability to deliver better economic performance
through butylene selectivity and high conversion, the company says, and it maintains
coke-selective bottoms upgrading and high distillate yields that increases refiners' profitability.
Fourtune is the latest product based on BASF's Multiple Framework Topology (MFT) technology.
BASF's MFT technology enhances performance through the use of more than one framework
topology that work together to tailor the catalyst selectivity profile, BASF says. Evaluations
of the new MFT technology have demonstrated Fourtune's ability to help maximize margins and
provide operating flexibility to make more butylene to feed the alkylation unit.
AI refinery project. Artificial intelligence (AI) technology is set to become more widely used in
the refining industry. A partnership between BP plc (London, U.K.; www.bp.com) and Beyond
Limits (Pasadena, Calif.; www.beyond.ai) has resulted in an " operate-to-plan " project using
AI at a BP refinery.
" In many cases, a linear plan for a processing unit is not realizable initially, so engineers have
to make it work on the ground, based on what is happening in the plant, " explains Kim Gilbert,
director of technical sales engineering at Beyond Limits. The AI project started on a naphtha
unit with 8-10 distillation towers. The objective was to use AI to help the plant engineers
implement their linear plan from AspenTech.
The AI software, which was developed from technology licensed from NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, is using machine learning to identify anomalies and long-term patterns in the
data, and connect them to explanations that make sense to operators.
the current situation is almost a rehearsal
for 15 years from now, " says
Lux Research's von Berkel. " It's like
a stress test for oil companies. If you
want to know how prepared they
are for peak demand, have a look at
the present. "
Following the " standard playbook "
response of cutting costs, von Berkel
says, " the question then becomes
where do you cut costs and where
do you stop investing? "
Crude-to-chemicals
While demand for ground transportation
fuels will likely decline in coming
years, demand for petrochemicals is
still forecast to grow.
" The major growth area among hydrocarbons
is petrochemicals, " says
FGE's Sawyer. " Demand for naphtha
and LPG [liquified petroleum gas] will
16
increase significantly, but if you look
at the supply, there is an increasingly
large supply coming from non-refinery
sources. " For example, ethane
from shale deposits is being used as
petrochemical feedstock, and there
is a significant amount of LPG coming
out of crude oil production, rather
than from refineries, as well as the inclusion
of biofuels and other oxygenates
into fuel formulations.
For every 100 barrels of oil in increased
demand, there might be
only 60 barrels of that coming from a
refinery, Sawyer says.
" The future of refining is how they
are going to adapt to that. Not only
are they challenged to manage the
molecules, but also to manage the
assets they've got, such as logistical
infrastructure, tanks, real estate and
so on, to play into the market that is
developing, " Sawyer explains.
" This is what refiners have done
for 100 years, but the challenge is
big and it's right in front of us, " he
notes. Refineries are not dead - out
to 2040, there will still be oil demand
for 100 million bbl/d, Sawyer says,
so refineries will still play a role, but
it might be a smaller one. " So that
begs the question of what level of investments
should be made and what
kind of investment should it be and
where, and so on. "
IMO update
The beginning of 2020 also saw the
start of the anticipated regulations
from the International Maritime Organization
for sulfur levels in shipping
fuels, reducing the allowable
percentage from 3.5% to 0.5%. For
more on the IMO order, see Chem.
Eng., May 2019, pp. 16-20.
After a sluggish start in 2018, when
the IMO fuel sulfur limits were announced,
there was quite a bit of
action in 2019, as over 2,000 sulfur
emissions scrubbers were retrofitted
on existing ships by the end of 2019.
The number will rise in 2020 and 2021.
Newly built ships will be fitted with
scrubbers, or will have the space and
the tie-ins to add them easily.
Onboard scrubbers for sulfur emissions
make good economic sense
when the price differential between
high-S fuel and low-S fuel is sufficient
to justify the investment. That difference
has been there, von Berkel
says, but COVID-19 has pushed
down crude prices, so the differentials
between low-S and high-S fuels are
correspondingly smaller. " So the investment
[in scrubbers] is still acceptable,
but it's not as 'sexy' as it was
a few months ago, " von Berkel says.
" Up until Q1 of this year, demand
has not been that great for the low-S
bunker fuels, because people wanted
to burn the cheaper, high-S fuel for as
long as they could, " von Berkel explains.
And refiners have generally not
invested heavily in making low-S bunker
oil. " So the supply of low-S fuel
has not been tested. We have to wait
for the true supply and demand picture
until later this year, but the deadlines
went by without a hitch. "
n
Scott Jenkins
CHEMICAL ENGINEERING WWW.CHEMENGONLINE.COM MAY 2020

http://www.clariant.com http://www.imo.org http://www.basf.com http://www.bp.com http://www.beyond.ai http://WWW.CHEMENGONLINE.COM

Chemical Engineering May 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Chemical Engineering May 2020