The refinery product slate has evolved over time from the early days of lamp oil and

kerosene to
modern day transportation fuels including gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. In more recent times,
chemical plant facilities were co-located adjacent to crude oil refineries to upgrade some refinery
streams into higher value chemical products. The typical product split between fuels and
chemicals for traditional medium conversion fuels refineries has been about 95% fuels to 5%
chemicals

Today there is emerging trend that is significantly changing the refining complex product slate.
Crude oil refining investments are shifting aggressively from an emphasis on transportation fuels
to higher margin chemicals products. With this focus, each component of the petrochemical
complex is evaluated for its potential to contribute to increased production of the desired
chemical product slate.

Chemicals demand growth is especially strong in emerging regions including china and India.
Polyethylene, Polypropylene and Paraxyelene demand trends. This strong demand has led to a
number of new refining /chemicals investments

Trends in India have many thematic parallels with china. India is quickly becoming one of the
largest global economies. There is a very large population which is transitioning into a middle
class standard of living .with that move, there is a greater demand for packaged goods, small
appliances and eventually individual transportation. All of these require chemicals or plastics.
India uses fewer chemicals per capita than many other countries so there is a significant potential
for growth and polyolefin demands could double in the coming years

The traditional refinery configuration generally maximized fuels production and chemicals were
typically limited to opportunistic removal of aromatic compounds for benzene, toluene and
Xylene sales. Given the increasing global demand for chemical products, fast approaching tighter
environmental regulations and a high cost of energy, the traditional refinery run plan as shown in
Figure will need change to remain profitable

The Key factors for integrated crude to chemicals run plan include

 Maximum conversion of feed stocks into Light chemicals and minimization of fuels
products.
 Feed and product (material balance ) flexibility to adjust with changing market drivers
 Energy optimization to reliably and economically meet the needs for high severity, high
conversion process demands
 Environmental capability to meet stricter emissions laws
 Configuration optimization to meet capex and opex goals.

The major changes for a chemicals focused run plan require a step change increase in conversion
of gasoil and resid to light liquids by adding additional process units
Since Vacuum Resid can be a significant fraction (30 to 40%) of the complex feed when
processing heavy crudes, it follows that Resid conversion technology selection is an important
factor in maximizing economic chemicals production and meeting evolving environmental
standards. Resid conversion process convert low value fuel oil to higher value products.
However, Resid upgrading consumes significant amounts of energy and can substantially
increase the total complex investment. Additionally some resid conversion process can produce
large quantities of waste material such as spent catalyst, waste pitch, or undesirable by-products
such as high sulfur petroleum coke.

There are a number of technology alternatives for each of these processing steps. However, the
vacuum Resid conversion technology is critical to managing a range of important parameters
affecting the configuration. These factors include investment cost, feed flexibility, energy
management, hydrogen consumption, cost and disposition of unconvertes pitch and tar, cost of
fresh catalysts, and the environmental impacts of the overall complex.

This paper focuses on two main themes:

1. An overview of the drivers creating the shift in the Crude to chemicals market
a. Growing worldwide chemicals demand
b. New environmental regulations

A Growing world population, combined with an increasing standard of living is the engine
driving demand for chemicals.