Oil Refinery

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Lore & Background

The Chinese were among the first civilizations to refine oil. As early as the first century, the Chinese were refining crude oil for use as an energy source. Between 512 and 518, in the late Northern Wei dynasty, the Chinese geographer, writer and politician Li Daoyuan introduced the process of refining oil into various lubricants in his famous work Commentary on the Water Classic. Crude oil was often distilled by Persian chemists, with clear descriptions given in handbooks such as those of Muhammad ibn Zakarīya Rāzi (c. 865–925). The streets of Baghdad were paved with tar, derived from petroleum that became accessible from natural fields in the region. In the 9th century, oil fields were exploited in the area around modern Baku, Azerbaijan. These fields were described by the Arab geographer Abu al-Hasan 'Alī al-Mas'ūdī in the 10th century, and by Marco Polo in the 13th century, who described the output of those wells as hundreds of shiploads. Arab and Persian chemists also distilled crude oil in order to produce flammable products for military purposes. Through Islamic Spain, distillation became available in Western Europe by the 12th century. In the Northern Song dynasty (960–1127), a workshop called the "Fierce Oil Workshop", was established in the city of Kaifeng to produce refined oil for the Song military as a weapon. The troops would then fill iron cans with refined oil and throw them toward the enemy troops, causing a fire – effectively the world's first "fire bomb". The workshop was one of the world's earliest oil refining factories where thousands of people worked to produce Chinese oil-powered weaponry.

In Their Own Story

Samuel Kier established America's first oil refinery in Pittsburgh on Seventh Avenue near Grant Street, in 1853. Polish pharmacist and inventor Ignacy Łukasiewicz established an oil refinery in Jasło, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in Poland) in 1854. The first large refinery opened at Ploiești, Romania, in 1856–1857. It was in Ploiesti that, 51 years later, in 1908, Lazăr Edeleanu, a Romanian chemist of Jewish origin who got his PhD in 1887 by discovering amphetamine, invented, patented and tested on industrial scale the first modern method of liquid extraction for refining crude oil, the Edeleanu process. This increased the refining efficiency compared to pure fractional distillation and allowed a massive development of the refining plants. Successively, the process was implemented in France, Germany, U.S. and in a few decades became worldwide spread. In 1910 Edeleanu founded "Allgemeine Gesellschaft für Chemische Industrie" in Germany, which, given the success of the name, changed to Edeleanu GmbH, in 1930. During the time of Nazi rule, the company was bought by the Deutsche Erdöl-AG and Edeleanu, being of Jewish origin, moved back to Romania. After the war, the trademark was used by the successor company EDELEANU Gesellschaft mbH Alzenau (RWE) for many petroleum products, while the company was lately integrated as EDL in the Pörner Group. The Ploiești refineries, after being taken over by Nazi Germany, were bombed in the 1943 Operation Tidal Wave by the Allies, during the Oil Campaign of World War II. Another close contender for the title of hosting the world's oldest oil refinery is Salzbergen in Lower Saxony, Germany. Salzbergen's refinery was opened in 1860. At one point, the refinery in Ras Tanura, Saudi Arabia owned by Saudi Aramco was claimed to be the largest oil refinery in the world. For most of the 20th century, the largest refinery was the Abadan Refinery in Iran. This refinery suffered extensive damage during the Iran–Iraq War. Since 25 December 2008, the world's largest refinery complex is the Jamnagar Refinery Complex, consisting of two refineries side by side operated by Reliance Industries Limited in Jamnagar, India with a combined production capacity of 1,240,000 barrels per day.

Reader's Guide

Prior to World War II in the early 1940s, most petroleum refineries in the United States consisted simply of crude oil distillation units (often referred to as atmospheric crude oil distillation units). Some refineries also had vacuum distillation units as well as thermal cracking units such as visbreakers (viscosity breakers, units to lower the viscosity of the oil). All of the many other refining processes discussed below were developed during the war or within a few years after the war. They became commercially available within 5 to 10 years after the war ended and the worldwide petroleum industry experienced very rapid growth. The driving force for that growth in technology and in the number and size of refineries worldwide was the growing demand for automotive gasoline and aircraft fuel. In the United States, for various complex economic and political reasons, the construction of new refineries came to a virtual stop in about the 1980s. However, many of the existing refineries in the United States have revamped many of their units and/or constructed add-on units in order to: increase their crude oil processing capacity, increase the octane rating of their product gasoline, lower the sulfur content of their diesel fuel and home heating fuels to comply with environmental regulations and comply with environmental air pollution and water pollution requirements. In the 19th century, refineries in the U.S. processed crude oil primarily to recover the kerosene. There was no market for the more volatile fraction, including gasoline, which was considered waste and was often dumped directly into the nearest river. The invention of the automobile shifted demand to gasoline and diesel, which remain the primary refined products today. Today, national and state legislation require refineries to meet stringent air and water cleanliness standards. In fact, oil companies in the U.S. perceive obtaining a permit to build a modern refinery to be so difficult and costly that no new refineries were built (though many have been expanded) in the U.S. from 1976 until 2014 when the small Dakota Prairie Refinery in North Dakota began operation. More than half the refineries that existed in 1981 are now closed due to low utilization rates and accelerating mergers. As a result of these closures total US refinery capacity fell between 1981 and 1995, though the operating capacity stayed fairly constant in that time period at around 15,000,000 barrels per day. Increases in facility size and improvements in efficiencies have offset much of the lost physical capacity of the industry. In 1982 (the earliest data provided), the United States operated 301 refineries with a combined capacity of 17.9 million barrels of crude oil each calendar day. In 2010, there were 149 operable U.S. refineries with a combined capacity of 17.6 million barrels per calendar day. By 2014 the number of refineries had decreased to 140 but the total capacity increased to 18.02 million barrels per calendar day. To reduce operating costs and depreciation, refining is operated in fewer sites but of bigger capacity.

Did You Know?

• The Chinese were among the first civilizations to refine oil, as early as the first century.
• In the Northern Song dynasty (960–1127), a workshop called the 'Fierce Oil Workshop' in Kaifeng produced refined oil for the world's first 'fire bomb'.
• Samuel Kier established America's first oil refinery in Pittsburgh in 1853.
• The first large refinery opened at Ploiești, Romania, in 1856–1857.
• Since 25 December 2008, the world's largest refinery complex is the Jamnagar Refinery Complex in India, with a combined production capacity of 1,240,000 barrels per day.