00:00:00.760 --> 00:00:05.960 Modern life would hardly be possible without products derived from crude oil. 00:00:07.420 --> 00:00:10.719 These include fuels and oils for most forms of transport, 00:00:10.719 --> 00:00:14.330 lubricating oils and tar and bitumen for road surfacing. 00:00:14.330 --> 00:00:18.340 Crude oil is also the starting material for 00:00:18.340 --> 00:00:22.800 a huge variety of organic, carbon-based, chemicals and products, 00:00:22.800 --> 00:00:29.800 such as plastics and synthetic fibres. Most oil refineries are on the coast 00:00:29.980 --> 00:00:34.230 and have good road and rail links. On this site 00:00:34.230 --> 00:00:40.790 two crude distillers together process 34,000 tonnes of crude oil per day. 00:00:41.320 --> 00:00:44.860 There is also a catalytic cracker 00:00:44.860 --> 00:00:48.680 and a platformer for converting straight chain molecules 00:00:48.690 --> 00:00:55.290 to branched chain. Onsite is a range of storage tanks for the different products. 00:00:55.500 --> 00:00:59.640 Crude oil is brought in by pipeline to storage tanks. 00:00:59.980 --> 00:01:02.120 Many of the products from this refinery 00:01:02.120 --> 00:01:09.260 are used by the chemical industry in the surrounding area. This is crude oil. 00:01:09.260 --> 00:01:12.420 It's a mixture of different hydrocarbons. 00:01:18.040 --> 00:01:23.100 The first step in refining is to separate the oils into fractions of different boiling ranges 00:01:23.110 --> 00:01:26.550 by fractional distillation. 00:01:26.550 --> 00:01:30.100 The crude oil is first heated by gas or oil fired burners, 00:01:30.100 --> 00:01:35.680 this vapourises most of the oil. The vapour 00:01:35.680 --> 00:01:39.380 is fed into the bottom of the fractionating tower, a column 00:01:39.380 --> 00:01:43.600 containing over 40 perforated trays. The bottom of the tower 00:01:43.600 --> 00:01:46.930 is kept at 360 degrees Celsius and the top 00:01:46.930 --> 00:01:52.560 at about 100 degrees Celsius. The vapours rise up the tower 00:01:52.560 --> 00:01:57.040 and condense to liquid when they arrive at a tray that is sufficiently cool. 00:01:57.180 --> 00:02:00.080 The perforations in the trays allow vapours 00:02:00.080 --> 00:02:04.560 to rise up the tower and liquids to drip down. 00:02:04.680 --> 00:02:06.500 Liquids called fractions 00:02:06.500 --> 00:02:10.679 are piped off at different levels in the tower. The higher up the tower, 00:02:10.679 --> 00:02:16.319 the lower the boiling point and the shorter the hydrocarbon chains. 00:02:16.640 --> 00:02:18.460 Gases from the top of the tower 00:02:18.470 --> 00:02:25.170 are used as fuel gases, both for sale and in the refinery. 00:02:25.170 --> 00:02:29.069 The thick liquid residue from the base of the column may be distilled again 00:02:29.069 --> 00:02:36.069 under reduced pressure to give further separation. 00:02:40.520 --> 00:02:44.340 There is more demand for the shorter chain fractions from the initial, or primary, 00:02:44.349 --> 00:02:45.209 distillation 00:02:45.209 --> 00:02:49.770 than for the longer ones. Longer chain fractions are therefore cracked, 00:02:49.770 --> 00:02:53.709 the process of breaking the molecules to give shorter chain fractions. 00:02:53.709 --> 00:02:57.209 10,000 tonnes of petroleum fractions 00:02:57.209 --> 00:03:03.670 are cracked each day at this plant. In catalytic, or cat, cracking 00:03:03.670 --> 00:03:08.110 the long chain fraction is mixed with a powdered catalyst of silicon dioxide 00:03:08.110 --> 00:03:11.519 and aluminium oxide and the mixture enters the reactor 00:03:11.519 --> 00:03:14.860 at about five hundred degrees Celsius for five seconds. 00:03:14.860 --> 00:03:20.200 Here the cracking takes place. The catalyst 00:03:20.200 --> 00:03:25.850 becomes coated with carbon and is recycled. The catalyst passes to a 00:03:25.850 --> 00:03:26.799 regenerator 00:03:26.799 --> 00:03:32.739 where the carbon is burnt off in air. The products of cracking 00:03:32.739 --> 00:03:37.150 include alkenes. These are hydrocarbons with reactive double bonds. 00:03:37.150 --> 00:03:41.420 They're vital starting materials for chemical processes, 00:03:41.420 --> 00:03:46.709 such as polymerisation. Valuable short chain alkanes for petrol 00:03:46.709 --> 00:03:49.329 are also produced. 00:03:55.340 --> 00:04:00.180 After fractional distillation and cracking fractions may undergo further treatment, 00:04:00.190 --> 00:04:03.260 including desulfurisation to remove sulfur, 00:04:03.260 --> 00:04:10.260 which would produce sulfur dioxide when the fuels are burnt, 00:04:11.870 --> 00:04:13.260 platforming, in which 00:04:13.260 --> 00:04:16.840 straight chain alkanes are converted to branched chain alkanes, 00:04:16.840 --> 00:04:20.609 by heating over a platinum catalyst. The branched chains 00:04:20.609 --> 00:04:24.740 produce better quality petrol. Fractions are also blended, 00:04:24.740 --> 00:04:27.780 mixed to give products of the required properties 00:04:27.780 --> 00:04:32.350 for use as fuels and lubricants. The products are 00:04:32.350 --> 00:04:35.520 transported off-site by road, rail, sea and air.
Office location
Engineering company LOTUS®
Russia, Ekaterinburg, Lunacharskogo street, 240/12