4 replies to this topic

[ajsc]

Dear all, 

I need to do a rough economic balance to a fired heater but I'm having trouble to find or estimate a price for the refinery fuel gas and fuel oil. Can someone give me a hand?

 

Thanks in advance. 

Cheers,

 

Alex

Edited by ajsc, 13 May 2013 - 10:34 AM.

[Himanshu Sharma]

Hi !

 

I wish i could answer in simple price terms

 

Fuel oil (of different grades) prices you may obtain from journals like Platt but determination of fuel gas cost price is really judgmental and depends on configuration of refinery from where you are sourcing it.

 

In case you have a common refinery source for fuel oil and fuel gas ,i suggest you to develop an LP model for determining prices though its a time consuming activity.

 

Just my two cents in the end,before going for economics ,please make sure that your furnace can allow firing for fuel oil as many high temperature furnace call for gas firing only for a better COT control.

[Chellani]

You need to do few quick calculations, full fledged LP will be very time consuming. Try answering these questions and you may find solution

 

1. What is marginal fuel for refinery i.e. if you increase / reduce fuel gas/oil what will be the change in overall balance of refinery. Few refineries have fuel import e.g. natural gas which would increase if energy demand increases and would reduce if fuel gas production increases for fixed demand. In few cases it is fuel oil product from refinery

2. Do you have flexibility to replace fuel gas/fuel oil with marginal fuel e.g. if fuel consumption increases, natural gas can only be used for burners designed for gas / dual firing. This activity could be time consuming as you have to look at all possible firing options. Someone in refinery who knows fuel balance can help you with this

3. Do you know LHV of marginal fuel, fuel gas and fuel oil

4. What is cutter stock? If it is final product, you can price it; use specs for final product and refinery fuel oil. If it is intermediate stream, all the best

 

In recent project, I used refinery-wide detailed simulation to price these streams which worked very well.

 

Hope this helps.

[Himanshu Sharma]

Hi Chellani !

 

"In recent project, I used refinery-wide detailed simulation to price these streams which worked very well."

 

I want to learn how to use simulation for pricing Intermediate streams/internal fuel to refinery,can you please elaborate on this.So far i have relied on LP modeling using Aspen PIMS for pricing these streams and sometimes results have been intriguing !

 

We often do Detailed feasibility reports and thereafter Notice for inviting Tenders for technology section where you have to provide Feed/product prices for process licensor to optimize.

 

Any alternate method for pricing fuel/intermediate streams will be very helpful for back checking or to be used as shortcut method.

[Chellani]

Himanshu,

 

Accuracy of LP is decided based on delta vectors; how they are generated, do they capture all "effects" related to process, feed quality and anything else. Finally, they are linear.

 

Process simulation is non-linear and captures everything in upstream / downstream units till blending. Process models are kinetics based rather than typical values from experience.

 

As I mentioned earlier, pricing stream blended in final product e.g. VR could be straight forward i.e. use fuel oil product and take debit for cutter-stock (provided fuel oil demand is sufficient to absorb incremental VR) but pricing interemdiate streams e.g. UCO or LCO or increamental feed between coker, fuel oil and hydrocracker could be tricky. Price is dependent on availability of downstream units, impact of that on final blending etc. etc. (you know it )

 

All these questions can be answered if detailed simulation of refinery (from crude to final products) is available.

 

Few papers which can help you in this

 

http://www.kbcat.com..._Simulation.pdf

 

http://www.kbcat.com...lishChukman.pdf

 

Few more on relevant topic

 

http://www.kbcat.com...echnical-papers

 

Cheers