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Simulation of Crude Distillation Unit of Eastern Refinery Limited (ERL) Using

ASPEN PLUS

Conference Paper · June 2015

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.1900.7604

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 Simulation of Crude Distillation Unit of Eastern
Refinery Limited (ERL) Using ASPEN PLUS
Mohammad Hasibul Hasan*, Quazi Azizul Hassan, Sabrina Khan, Tania Hossain and Dr. M.T. Sowgath
Department of Chemical Engineering
Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology
Dhaka- 1000, Bangladesh
[email protected]* , [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

Abstract— Petroleum products play an important role simulated data was validated. Different distillation curves were
in different sectors of Bangladesh and Eastern Refinery Limited obtained from the simulator and later was compared with
is the most renowned company to refine crude oil to produce standard curves.
different petroleum products. It produces almost 16 different
petroleum products such as LPG, Naphtha, Kerosene, Diesel, II. ASPEN PLUS SIMULATOR
AGO, Fuel gas. Though refining process consists of a wide
variety of units the major part is done in Crude Distillation Unit
‘Aspen Plus’ simulator is integrated with ‘AspenONE’
(CDU). So, Simulation of Crude Distillation Unit of Eastern software which is a product of world’s leading process
Refinery Limited Company was carried out using ‘Aspen Plus’ manufacturing & optimization software producer company
Process Simulator. The aim of the simulation was to compare the Aspen-Tech [4].
theoretical data with the simulated data. Design data have been ‘Aspen Plus’ is specialized chemical process optimization
taken from Eastern Refinery Limited. Aspen Plus model was & simulation software used for design, operation &
developed and simulated data was validated. Different distillation optimization providing wide variety of tools to construct &
curves obtained from the simulator was found similar to the optimize process models. It is also facilitated with all kind of
expected.
thermodynamic physical properties along with the capability
Index Terms— Eastern Refinery, Aspen Plus, Simulation.
of handling solid, liquid, gas processes. ‘Aspen Plus’ software
can deal with different choices of chemical processes
I. INTRODUCTION including polymer process, pharmaceuticals and bio-tech,
Eastern Refinery Limited (ERL) plays an important role in biofuels, power, carbon capture, minerals, metals and mining.
supplying petroleum product around 40% of the country’s Evaluation of process safety and operability, control strategies
demand and maintains stability in the market of petroleum or optimization grade can be easily done by ‘Aspen Plus’
product of the country. It is a subsidiary of Bangladesh Dynamics. It has the ability to compare simulated data & plant
Petroleum Corporation (BPC) which was united under data in real time. This software ensures an improved user
Companies’ Act in 1913 (amended in 1994). It became a experience with leading-edge accuracy in chemical process
Public Limited in 1963 with 35% East Pakistan Industrial modeling [5].
Development Corporation (EPIDC)’s shares, 30% shares held Our total simulation was conducted using steady-state
by Burma Oil Company (BOC) and the rest 35% by private model developed under ‘Aspen plus’ version 8 environment.
entrepreneurs. From 1985, BPC became 100% share holder of BK-10 property package was selected as the thermodynamic
the company. ERL processes crude oil imported by BPC and fluid package. The simulation of Eastern Refinery model
delivers finished products to the other branches of BPC for consists of furnace used to heat the crude oil, and a CDU to
distribution and marketing purpose. ERL imports two types of fractionate the crude into its straight run products. The
crude oil namely, Arabian Light Crude (ALC) from KSA and simulation was performed using specifications such as product
Murban Crude (MC) from UAE as main raw materials to flow rate constraints and duties of condensers, pump-around
produce petroleum products [1]. The specific gravity of ALC and reboilers. ASTM D86 curves were used for determining
is ranged between 0.84 to 0.86, whereas for Murban, the range the behavior of the crude distilled products.
is 0.82 to 0.83 [2]. It produces 16 products from these crude III. ROLE OF SIMULATION
oils. The units of Eastern Refinery includes the major process
units: (1) Crude distillation unit, (2) Catalytic reforming unit, Modeling and Simulation plays an important role in facing
(3) Asphaltic bitumen plant, (4) Long Residue Vis-breaking the challenges in both plant operation and business [6]. In
unit and (5) Mild hydrocracking unit. Among them, Crude operability point of view such as higher feed rate, increased
Distillation Unit (CDU) is the most energy intensive unit [3]. yield of high value product, constant fluctuations in the raw
Simulation of this energy intensive unit of ERL was carried material quality and other disturbances of the process units are
out using ‘Aspen Plus’ Process Simulator. The main objective studied by simulation [7]. Return product quality and
was to compare the simulated results with the standard data. increased energy efficiencies are subject to plant operation &
For this purpose, Aspen Plus model was developed and process optimization. Simulation makes these tasks easier.
Imported raw crude properties are continually changing and V. PROCESS FLOW DIAGRAM
the complexities of petroleum mixture process model needs to
work for wide variety of mixture in a CDU [8].
In the simulation, the productions of Lights, Naphtha,
AGO, kerosene, diesel, fuel gas were main concern. LPG
consists of propane and butane. It is an alternative fuel source
for household ventures and motor vehicles. Kerosene is also
used for household purpose. Diesel is used in motor vehicles
and automobile engines [9]. But recently, the price of LPG has
increased greatly in international market because of its
demand [10]. The price of diesel is also increasing. So by
simulating thus studying different operating parameters &
optimizing the production of these petroleum products from
crude oil distillation, with proper quality control & reduction
of energy consumption, may lessen the situation a bit.
IV. PROCESS DESCRIPTION
In this work, in the ‘Aspen Plus’ model is developed using
80% Arabian Light Crude (ALC) and 20% Murban Crude
(MC) blend as feed crude to CDU.
The main separation process is carried out in the crude
distillation unit (CDU) where processed crude oil is
fractionated by CDU to produce LPG, Naphtha, Fuel oil,
Kerosene, Diesel, Bitumen, AGO and others based on the Fig. 1. Process flow diagram of crude distillation unit.
differences in relative volatility or boiling points of different
products. IV. RESULTS
At first Crude is sent to furnace where it is preheated to
almost 350oC for vaporizing the feed partially. The partially A. Comparison of ASTM D86 curve
vaporized preheated crude is then fed to the CDU column Several ASTM D86 curves of our different products have
while superheated steam is fed to the bottom stage for been plotted along with the standard ASTM D86 curves of the
providing the necessary reboiler duty. CDU is equipped with same component.
33 trays plus a partial condenser and feed is enters at 4th
equivalent tray.
From the atmospheric distillation column, the overhead
product is withdrawn & condensed and sent to the reflux drum
from where Lights & Naphtha are withdrawn. Lights can be
further processed to produce LPG and fuel gas.
Kerosene, diesel, AGO are drawn from 4th, 3rd & 2nd trays
respectively of the crude distillation column and are stripped
with steam to recover the respective products from the column
while refluxing the rest of the stream (gaseous) back to the
column. The products Kerosene, diesel, AGO are drawn at
243o, 330o, 468o F respectively from the column & thus are
usually used to preheat the crude feed prior to entering the
furnace before being stored at ambient conditions in the storage
tanks.
From the bottom of CDU Residue products are drawn at
538o F which mainly consists of higher hydrocarbons & can be
further processed to produce many different products.
Fig. 2. Graph of ASTM D86 curve of light product.
 Fig. 3. Graph of ASTM D86 curve of Naptha. Fig. 6. Graph of ASTM D86 curve of AGO.

Fig. 4. Graph of ASTM D86 curve of Kerosene. Fig. 7. Graph of ASTM D86 curve of Residue product.

B. Properties of different products & production rate

The simulated volumetric flow rates with their
corresponding temperatures for light product (Naphtha, LPG),
Kerosene product, Diesel product, AGO product, Residue
crude product and mixed Feed Crude were 141160.4 lb/hr and
-102.7 ˚F, 131270.8 lb/hr and 244.8 ˚F, 197698 lb/hr and
376.4 ˚F, 104019.7 lb/hr and 467.3˚F, 683292.4 lb/hr and
529.2˚F, 1240341.20 lb/hr and 400˚F respectively. The vapor
phase fraction for light to residue crude products was zero
indicating that they were completely in the liquid phase. But
vapor phase fraction for mixed feed was 0.233 indicating that
it has both liquid and vapor phase.
There was an increase in temperature from light product to
residue crude product. Average API gravity of Feed Crude was
11.7. Methane, Ethane & Propane content was less than 0.1 in
Kerosene to Residue products. But in lights along with
Naphtha most of them were present. Here in each case enthalpy
Fig. 5. Graph of ASTM D86 curve of Diesel. is less than zero.
 From these graphs, it can be seen that for ASTM D86, the
experimental values were slightly different from standard
values. Curves of Kerosene, Diesel and AGO could be the
example of this phenomenon. But in the case of Lights it is
found that experimental values were quite similar to
theoretical. The reason behind this is, in case of Lights, a few
post processing or purification steps are not required after the
CDU unit. As our simulation contains only the CDU unit, so
we get closer curves for Lights & Naphtha only. But the
ASTM D86 curves of other products of our simulation showed
a bit deviation or error because they require further unit
operations & additional processing steps in real life refining
process if we want very higher grade products. The most
salient feature of our simulation was that the ASTM D86
curves of different products of our simulation were not far
from the original higher grade products, whereas our
simulated unit was simpler than the original ERL plant. The
model do not contain the intermediate unit operation of ERL
Fig. 8. Percent production of different products. so our results for Naphtha, Kerosene, Diesel and AGO are
expected to deviate from the standard values. So, our goal was
fulfilled & simulation data were validated.
Actually, determination of the ASTM D86 curves for crude
oil is an important step used for decisions concerning control of
refinery processes. Therefore, utilization of reliable, accurate
and precise, ASTM D86 curves are very important to the
petroleum-industries.
VII. FUTURE WORK
Our simulation project being an ongoing project, there are
so many places for further improvements in different sections.
In our future work, we have a plan to simulate the total refinery
plant and to perform different operating parameters analysis.
Thus, we will determine the optimum condition for specific
operating parameters. Additionally we will perform the cost
analysis of the refinery plant & look for further improvements
reducing the cost. We will also emphasize on enhancing the
product quality.
Fig. 9. API Gravity of different products.
VIII. CONCLUSION
Aspen Plus model was developed and simulated data were
VI. DISCUSSION validated in this simulation process. Different distillation
The composition of any crude oil sample is approximated curves (ASTM D86) obtained from the simulator was
by ASTM D86 curve. The method used is basically a batch approximately similar to the standard ones. Preliminary result
distillation operation, using a large number of stages and high showed that prediction by Aspen plus regarding the product
reflux to distillate ratio. Number of stages of the column was quality is close to literature value. However, Kerosene and
33, which is large enough to determine the curves. The naphtha related unit operation needs to be added to get the
temperature at any point on the temperature-volumetric yield more accurate trends reducing deviations.
curve represents the ASTM D86 values of the hydrocarbon
material present at the given volume percent point distilled. ACKNOWLEDGMENT
From Fig. 2 to Fig. 7, the curves were shown for lights The work is supervised by Dr. Md Tanvir Sowgath. We are
product, naphtha, kerosene, diesel, AGO, residue crude very grateful for his kind assistance. We are also thankful to
respectively where experimental means prediction by the department of Chemical Engineering, BUET.
simulator and standard means standard value of the products
in literature. In each case distilled volumetric rates with REFERENCES
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