ABSTRACT
Products from crude oil feedstocks (including heavy crude oil), the various viscous feedstocks (such as extra heavy oil and tar sand bitumen), and unconventional sources such as coal (coal liquids and chemicals), oil shale (shale oil and chemicals), and biomass (bio-oil chemicals) are important aspects of current and future sources of energy and chemicals. Whatever the rationale and however the numbers are manipulated, the supply of crude oil, which is still the basic feedstock for refineries and the petrochemicals industry, is finite and, in this context, the dominant position of crude oil will become unsustainable as supply and demand issues erode the economic advantage of crude oil over other alternative feedstocks.
This chapter presents a brief overview of the refinery processes and the types of feedstocks that are currently accepted and used by refineries and places the line of processes that result in the production of products in their respective placements within a refinery. The chapter focuses on those processes that apply to the production of products from conventional crude oil as well as the production of products from the viscous feedstocks (heavy crude oil, extra heavy crude oil, tar sand bitumen, and process residua) such as (1) distillation, (2) thermal processes, (3) catalytic processes, and (4) hydroprocesses.
