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A comparative assessment of resource efficiency in petroleum refining
Jeongwoo Han a,⇑, Grant S. Forman b, Amgad Elgowainy a, Hao Cai a, Michael Wang a, Vincent B. DiVita c
a Systems Assessment Group, Energy Systems Division, Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 S. Cass Avenue, Argonne, IL 60439, United states
b Sasol Synfuels International, 900 Threadneedle, Suite 100, Houston, TX 77079, United States
c Jacobs Consultancy Inc., 5995 Rogerdale Road, Houston, TX 77072, United States
h i g h l i g h t s
 Investigate refineries with various complexities and operational flexibilities.
 Categorize refineries into three groups by crude density and heavy products yield.
 Estimate GHG emissions cost to produce more of the desirable fuels.
 Complex refineries can process heavier crude into more gasoline and distillate.
 Complex refineries are more resource efficient, but more energy and GHG intensive.
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history:
Received 12 January 2015
Received in revised form 4 March 2015
Accepted 10 March 2015
Available online 25 March 2015
Keywords:
Petroleum refinery
Life-cycle analysis
Energy efficiency
Resource efficiency
Greenhouse gas emissions
a b s t r a c t
Because of increasing environmental and energy security concerns, a detailed understanding of energy
efficiency and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the petroleum refining industry is critical for fair
and equitable energy and environmental policies. To date, this has proved challenging due in part to
the complex nature and variability within refineries. In an effort to simplify energy and emissions refin-
ery analysis, we delineated LP modeling results from 60 large refineries from the US and EU into broad
categories based on crude density (API gravity) and heavy product (HP) yields. Product-specific efficien-
cies and process fuel shares derived from this study were incorporated in Argonne National Laboratory’s
GREET life-cycle model, along with regional upstream GHG intensities of crude, natural gas and electricity
specific to the US and EU regions. The modeling results suggest that refineries that process relatively
heavier crude inputs and have lower yields of HPs generally have lower energy efficiencies and higher
GHG emissions than refineries that run lighter crudes with lower yields of HPs. The former types of
refineries tend to utilize energy-intensive units which are significant consumers of utilities (heat and
electricity) and hydrogen. Among the three groups of refineries studied, the major difference in the
energy intensities is due to the amount of purchased natural gas for utilities and hydrogen, while the
sum of refinery feed inputs are generally constant. These results highlight the GHG emissions cost a refi-
ner pays to process deep into the barrel to produce more of the desirable fuels with low carbon to hydro-
gen ratio.
 2015 Argonne National Laboratory. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC
BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
1. Introduction
Increasing concerns with the consequences of climate change
turns scrutiny towards the source and efficiency of energy produc-
tion and consumption. Within this context, petroleum is a major
source of global energy demand and a primary component of
transportation fuels. In 2011, petroleum accounted for 34% of
global energy consumption and 36% of global greenhouse gas
(GHG) emissions [1], while the transportation sector in the US
and the EU consumed 71% and 62% of total petroleum products,
respectively, as shown in Fig. S1 [2,3].
Regulations are being developed in the US and EU to reduce pet-
roleum consumption, encourage use of alternative fuels and pro-
mote energy efficiency. In the US, the Renewable Fuel Standard
(RFS) mandates the production of 36 billion gallons of renewable
fuels with various GHG emissions reduction thresholds relative
to conventional gasoline and diesel [4]. California implemented
the Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) in 2009 to reduce the GHG
intensity of transportation fuels [5]. The Renewable Energy
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.fuel.2015.03.038
0016-2361/ 2015 Argonne National Laboratory. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
⇑Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 630 262 6519.
E-mail
addresses:
jhan@anl.gov
(J.
Han),
grant.forman@us.sasol.com
(G.S.
Forman),
aelgowainy@anl.gov
(A.
Elgowainy),
hcai@anl.gov
(H.
Cai),
mqwang@anl.gov (M. Wang), Vince.Divita@jacobs.com (V.B. DiVita).
Fuel 157 (2015) 292–298
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Fuel
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/fuel
Directive (RED) in the EU requires 10% of transportation energy
consumption to be produced from renewable sources by 2020
[6]. The production of energy from these renewable sources must
achieve a minimum 35% reduction in life-cycle GHG emissions
against conventional, petroleum-derived baseline fuels, with the
threshold being elevated to 50% in 2018 [7].
Notably, all of these regulations require a reliable estimation of
life-cycle
GHG
emissions
of
alternative
transportation
fuels,
including petroleum-derived gasoline and diesel baseline fuels.