Production Planning and Scheduling Petroleum Refineries

Overview:

Introduction:

Petroleum refineries are industrial facilities that transform crude oil into a range of useful products such as gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and petrochemicals. This is achieved through complex processes like distillation, cracking, and chemical treatment to meet market demands and quality standards. This training program is specifically designed to identify and resolve issues of production planning and scheduling in petroleum refineries that are most commonly encountered by refinery personnel working in this area. 

Program Objectives:

At the end of this program, participants will be able to:

• Gain an appreciation of the planning and scheduling tools that will be useful for planning of crude and product deliveries.

• Differentiate and appreciate the similarities and differences between planning and scheduling.

• Explore the principles of scheduling optimization.

• Gain the skills to crude selection and optimization that results in improved profitability.

• Develop the skills necessary to apply blending techniques using excel and linear programming software.

Targeted Audience:

• Production planners and schedulers in petroleum refineries.

• Refinery operations managers.

• Process engineers and production engineers.

• Maintenance managers and personnel involved in refinery operations.

• Supply chain managers and logistics coordinators in refineries.

• Oil and gas industry professionals interested in refining operations and efficiency.

Program Outlines:

Unit 1:

Application of Planning and Scheduling:

• Overview of planning and scheduling processes in oil refineries, including crude selection and capacity utilization.

• Refinery configuration, including hydro skimming, secondary conversion, and integrated refineries.

• Considerations for existing and new refineries, along with crude selection and scheduling processes.

• Optimization strategies for cut-points, managing upsets, and assessing tankage requirements.

• Understanding the impact of process operations on refinery planning and scheduling.

Unit 2:

Improving Product Movements and Releasing Tankages:

• Basic information required for effective planning.

• Importance of crude assay and intermediate feed characteristics.

• Key yield and product properties for planning.

• Consideration of process units and utilities in the refining process.

Unit 3:

Product Blending Rules:

• Understanding product specifications and blending requirements.

• New trends in fuel production and environmental issues.

• Impact of crude cost and product netback on blending decisions.

Unit 4:

Formulation of Problem:

• Refinery flow-sheets and simplified material balance.

• Formulation of demand equations and product inventory control.

• Controlling product quality and fixed composition blends.

• Managing capacity control and constraints.

• Availability of feedstock and process control considerations.

Unit 5:

Application to a Refinery Worksheet:

• Managing petroleum product movement and exchanges.

• Optimizing marginal depot supply and movements.

• Methods and tools used for optimization, including linear programming and graphic methods.

• Exploring recent developments in vendor software and mathematical approaches.

Unit 6:

Crude Oil Yields Refinery Technology:

• Overview of crude oil origins, characteristics, and assay properties.

• Product specifications for gasoline, kerosene, diesel, fuel oil, and petrochemical feedstocks.

• Understanding the complexity of refineries and the interrelationship of processes.

Unit 7:

Petroleum Refinery Processes:

• Crude processing, including desalting, atmospheric and vacuum distillation.

• Heavy oil processing through coking and thermal processes.

• Techniques such as delayed coking, fluid coking, flexicoking, and visbreaking.

Unit 8:

Process for Motor Fuel Production:

• Techniques for fluid catalytic cracking and hydrocracking.

• Understanding the catalytic cracking process, isomerization, and alkylation.

• Role of hydrotreating and catalytic reforming in fuel production.

Unit 9:

Supporting Operations:

• Blending for product specifications and hydrogen production.

• Overview of refinery gas plants and acid gas treating.

• Sulfur recovery plants and their role in refinery operations.

Unit 10:

Refinery Economics:

• Approaches to residue reduction and production of asphalt and residual fuel.

• Estimating costs and conducting economic evaluations for refinery operations.