Talk:Petroleum refining processes/Draft

This is the first article I have created in Citizendium

Some of this article may resemble content in the Wikipedia article "Oil Refinery", to which I made some significant contributions.

However, I started from scratch on this article and I deliberately named it Petroleum refining processes because I wanted this article to explain what unit processes a refinery contained and how the unit processes in a refinery were arranged. I did not intend this article to include material that detracted from explaining the technology of petroleum refining. For example, including the environmental aspects of a refinery such as air pollution control or wastewater control only leads to possibly argumentative content that has nothing to do with the actual technology of petroleum refining. I firmly believe that such content should be the subject of other articles on "Air pollution", "Water pollution", "Noise pollution", etc.

The two photos in this article are not the same as those in the Wikipedia "Oil refinery" article or anywhere else in Wikipedia or Commons. One of the two flow diagrams (the flow diagram of a typical complete refinery} was in the Wikipedia article and the other is original to this article. However, I am the original author of both diagrams.

I still intend to add another section to the article entitled "Refinery end-products".

This article includes a number of red links to non-existing CZ articles as yet. Given time, I intend to write a great many of those red-linked articles.

Since this is my first article here, I invite any and all constructive criticism. - Milton Beychok 02:08, 22 January 2008 (CST)

Overall, this looks like an excellent article. I can (later) get nitpicky about minor issues, but I like the overall structure. Some history of the technology may be appropriate to add here - when, and why, were the various processes developed?

I think there would be a place for an Oil refinery article which had a brief summmary of this article and "see Petroleum refining processes", then discussed the historical evolution of refineries, the pollution control issues, the economics of refining, and the worldwide distribution of refineries, and all that. I also hope that the articles on the various individual processes will contain somewhat more technical detail. Anthony Argyriou 10:30, 22 January 2008 (CST)

Approval?

Looking over this article, it's close to ready for approval. I've got a few comments and questions, and I think I'd like to invite a non-engineering editor to look this over for comments before actually nominating this for approval.

Comments & questions:

1. Last paragraph of Brief history of the petroleum industry and petroleum refining, there's consisted simply of atmospheric crude oil distillation and perhaps some refineries also had vacuum distillation as well as visbreakers. The first part should be explained - what is "atmospheric crude oil distillation"? The second part should be clarified. Either a few did, or none did, for both vacuum distillation and visbreakers. (And visbreaker should be explained a little. Perhaps call it "thermal cracking unit" in this instance.)
2. Were there any significant technological developments after World War 2, or was adoption of more advanced technology driven more by economic pressure?
3. As a matter of interest, some modern petroleum refineries are processing as much as 800,000 to 900,000 barrels (127,200 to 143,100 cubic meters) per day of crude oil. This sentence may be better in the introduction section, preferrably without the first 5 words.
4. The Refining end-products section needs more wikilinking.

Anthony Argyriou 17:36, 4 February 2008 (CST)

Anthony, if I may chip in, all of your points are valid and easily implemented. For example, I propose to revise the last paragraph of the history section to read:

Prior to World War II in the early 1940s, most petroleum refineries in the United States consisted simply of crude oil distillation units (often referred to as atmospheric crude oil distillation units). Some refineries also had vacuum distillation units as well as thermal cracking units such as visbreakers. All of the many other refining processes discussed below were developed during the war or within a few years after the war. They became commercially available within 5 to 10 years after the war ended and the worldwide petroleum industry experienced very rapid growth. The driving force for that growth in technology and in the number and size of refineries worldwide was the growing demand for automotive gasoline and aircraft fuel.

In the United States, for various complex economic reasons, the construction of new refineries came to a virtual stop in about the 1980's. However, many of the existing refineries in the United States have revamped many of their units and/or constructed add-on units in order to:

• Increase their crude oil processing capacity.
• Increase the octane rating of their product gasoline.
• Lower the sulfur content of their diesel fuel and home heating fuels to comply with environmental regulations.
• Comply with environmental air pollution and water pollution regulations.

[Note that I have linked crude oil distillation units to the section of the article that describes those unit and which includes a flow diagram of those crude oil distillation units.]

I also agree that the sentence Some modern petroleum refineries are processing as much as 800,000 to 900,000 barrels (127,200 to 143,100 cubic meters) per day of crude oil. could be moved to the lead-in introductory section.

A for more linking of the Refinery end-products , I could also do that quite readily.

If it is agreeable to you, I could implement the above changes in less than an hour. Please let me hear from you. Milton Beychok 21:56, 4 February 2008 (CST)

Why not petroleum refining instead of delimiting it to just the processes? We need an article petroleum refining, the main article on the matter, and all this article is going to be is redundant. Splintering off portions like this is artificial. Note that the Encyclopedia Britannica article on petroleum refining includes a section, "Environmental concerns". It does not distract. It provides complete coverage. Moreover, the bulleted sections here should not be such and provide no where near adequate coverage. Each should have a narrative paragraph at the least (e.g., compare the EB article on petroleum refining which provides six paragraphs on Naptha reforming, seven paragraphs on Catalytic cracking, etc.). Stephen Ewen 01:38, 5 February 2008 (CST)