A level-by-level debottlenecking approach in refinery operation

The refining industry is facing serious challenges because of severe market situations and stricter clean fuel regulations. To keep the competitive po sition, refineries have to implement nem processes or retrofit existing uni ts, which require large amounts of capital. However, refineries are always short of capital because of low operating margins. Therefore, an efficient strategy for the debottlenecking refinery is highly desirable. In this pape r, a new systematic approach is presented to deal with the debottlenecking issues in the overall refinery. In this two-stage approach, a mathematical model is proposed to identify processes that mostly constrain refinery prof it. Then, the aim of the debottlenecking refinery is to shift bottlenecks f rom an expensive process to a cheaper process by modifying networks such as the hydrogen network and the utility system. In the second stage, other bo ttlenecks, which cannot be handled by the network changes, are retrofitted by using detailed process models to achieve the required extra capacity.