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Methodological and Technological Issues in Technology Transfer


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10.2.1 Oil

Crude petroleum is refined into many products, primarily gasoline, jet, diesel, fuel oil, and lubricants. In the refining of crude to produce finished fuels, 5-10% of the oil is consumed during processing in a typical refinery. Potential exists in some refineries to improve efficiency (Phylipsen et al., 1998) and thereby reduce energy consumption in the process by up to 28% (Larsen, 1990). Among the measures and technologies to improve energy efficiency in refining are:

  • Dissemination of "best practices", such as improved operating procedures and strategies to bring low-efficiency refineries up to the level of high-efficiency refineries.
  • Use of newer more energy-efficient technologies, such as catalytic dewaxing, membrane separations, supercritical solvent extraction, simulated moving bed chromatographic separations, moving bed naphtha reforming, heat integration, co-generation, and advanced control and real-time optimisation systems.
  • The greatest potential to reduce GHG emissions in the oil-producing sector is to mitigate the release of GHGs produced as a byproduct of oil production. These are mainly CO2 and CH4. Methods to mitigate CO2 and CH4 are discussed below.

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