However, for those surfers dropping by in search of a brief introduction to oil refining, skip to 'Andrew's Notes' on oil refining. For the others, let the engineers dive right into the details. This list has been ordered from most common to least common. Main fractionators are required in every refinery. Nearly every refinery has some type of gas plant.
Most refineries have classical distillation columns.
Liquid-liquid extraction is in a few places. Precipitation, solid facilitated and membrane separations are used in specific applications. Black Oil Separation Product separation for main fractionators is also often called black oil separation. But main fractionators are also used in hydrocracker downstream processing. This operation has a clean feed.