Studies and Modeling for Upgrading Units for Heavy Oil Refineries

Abstract

The primary objective of this study is to predict the optimum operating conditions required to
operate an existing atmospheric distillation column to distillate heavier crude oils in same unit which
designed mainly to fractionate moderate and lighter crude oils.
Detailed simulation model of atmospheric distillation column was made using Aspen Hysys V.
8.4 software. The model built depending on the data of real plant which located in Al-Daura midland
refinery company at Baghdad/Iraq. The crude oils were described using the true boiling point (TBP)
assays and Peng-Robinson package were used to predict thermodynamic properties. Three different
types of crude oils (Kirkuk light, Basrah light and Basrah medium) were selected to identify the
model validity. The simulation results agree very well with the industrial plant results. Finally the
proposed model was used to predict optimum operating conditions required to distillate a blend of
light and heavy Basrah crude oil with different mixing ratios. The objective of the optimization is to
predict the maximum profit of the products within the required specifications. At optimum operating
conditions the total yearly profit for distillation of a blend of 50% vol. light+50% vol. heavy basrah
crude oil was found to be 713.28 M$.