ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses key refining advances as well as petrochemical integration including shale gas, high-quality fuels, renewables, energy efficiency, and refinery–petrochemical integration. With worldwide petroleum refining capacity expected to grow steadily for several decades, breakthrough new technologies will offer a competitive advantage for early adopters, allowing improved high-quality fuel production for transportation as well as potential petrochemical integration. Hydrocracking is a flexible catalytic refining process that is commonly applied to upgrade the heavier fractions obtained from the distillation of crude oils, including residue. Hydrocracking and hydrotreating are the some major technologies that allow refiners to meet fuel specifications. The core of hydroprocessing technologies are the catalysts, which can be designed for ultrahigh activity for heteroatom removal with selective cracking to distillate, jet, or naphtha depending on the refiner needs. Advanced technologies for shale gas liquid conversion allow refiners to maximize octane of the gasoline pool while producing more high-value petrochemical products from heavier naphtha fractions.
