Implications of local lifecycle analyses and low carbon fuel standard design on gasohol transportation fuels

State and regional policies, such as low carbon fuel standards (LCFSs), increasingly mandate that transportation fuels be examined according to their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. We investigate whether such policies benefit from determining fuel carbon intensities (FCIs) locally to account for variations in fuel production and to stimulate improvements in FCI. In this study, we examine the FCI of transportation fuels on a lifecycle basis within a specific state, Minnesota, and compare the results to FCIs using national averages. Using data compiled from 18 refineries over an 11-year period, we find that ethanol production is highly variable, resulting in a 42% difference between carbon intensities. Historical data suggests that lower FCIs are possible through incremental improvements in refining efficiency and the use of biomass for processing heat. Stochastic modeling of the corn ethanol FCI shows that gains in certainty due to knowledge of specific refinery inputs are overwhelmed by uncertainty in parameters external to the refiner, including impacts of fertilization and land use change. The LCA results are incorporated into multiple policy scenarios to demonstrate the effect of policy configurations on the use of alternative fuels. These results provide a contrast between volumetric mandates and LCFSs. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd.

Effects of ethanol on vehicle energy efficiency and implications on ethanol life-cycle greenhouse gas analysis.

Bioethanol is the world's largest-produced alternative to petroleum-derived transportation fuels due to its compatibility within existing spark-ignition engines and its relatively mature production technology. Despite its success, questions remain over the greenhouse gas (GHG) implications of fuel ethanol use with many studies showing significant impacts of differences in land use, feedstock, and refinery operation. While most efforts to quantify life-cycle GHG impacts have focused on the production stage, a few recent studies have acknowledged the effect of ethanol on engine performance and incorporated these effects into the fuel life cycle. These studies have broadly asserted that vehicle efficiency increases with ethanol use to justify reducing the GHG impact of ethanol. These results seem to conflict with the general notion that ethanol decreases the fuel efficiency (or increases the fuel consumption) of vehicles due to the lower volumetric energy content of ethanol when compared to gasoline. Here we argue that due to the increased emphasis on alternative fuels with drastically differing energy densities, vehicle efficiency should be evaluated based on energy rather than volume. When done so, we show that efficiency of existing vehicles can be affected by ethanol content, but these impacts can serve to have both positive and negative effects and are highly uncertain (ranging from -15% to +24%). As a result, uncertainties in the net GHG effect of ethanol, particularly when used in a low-level blend with gasoline, are considerably larger than previously estimated (standard deviations increase by >10% and >200% when used in high and low blends, respectively). Technical options exist to improve vehicle efficiency through smarter use of ethanol though changes to the vehicle fleets and fuel infrastructure would be required. Future biofuel policies should promote synergies between the vehicle and fuel industries in order to maximize the society-wise benefits or minimize the risks of adverse impacts of ethanol.

石化企业MES数据集成平台的设计与实现

论文结合石化企业的数据组织现状和应用需求,提出了由数据转换层、数据集成层和数据接口层组成的石化企业数据集成平台的三层体系结构,三层体系结构的划分使得数据集成平台具有良好的开放性和可扩展性。设计了基于消息中间件、XML技术和适配器技术的数据集成平台的技术架构。论文提供了一个石化企业数据集成平台的整体解决方案,它对企业数据集成平台的建立具有很大的指导意义。

炼化企业MES体系结构的分析与设计

分析了我国炼化企业的生产执行系统(MES)应用需求,设计了符合炼化企业特点的MES体系结构及其功能模块,并对其关键技术进行了探讨.

菌剂强化处理炼油废水及苯酚冲击下功能菌响应机制研究

近年来，我国炼油行业发展迅速，炼油能力全世界第二，炼油行业已成为污染大户。本研究针对炼油废水生物处理中存在的稳定达标难、抗冲击负荷能力差、建设投资与运行成本高等问题，就菌剂强化处理炼油废水中试与工程应用展开了研究，以期为菌剂的工程应用与推广提供理论参考与技术支持；并以炼油废水中的主要特征污染物苯酚为研究对象，考察了不同浓度苯酚冲击下功能菌的响应机制，并以此为指导研制功能菌激活促进剂，考察其对功能菌生物学指标的调控效果，以期为废水生物处理有毒污染物冲击调控提供理论依据与技术支持。 中试研究表明，菌剂强化处理炼油废水，出水COD、NH4+-N 平均值为86.7、7.6 mg/L，其平均去除率较常规生物处理系统分别提高了35.47%、59.28%，其耐受COD、NH4+-N 容积负荷分别高达2.42、0.139kg/(m3·d)，具有良好的耐冲击能力。工程应用研究表明，菌剂强化处理炼油废水，出水COD、NH4+-N 平均值分别为85.05、8.4mg/L，其去除率较常规生物处理系统提高了25.1%、28.7%，出水水质各项指标均达到了国家《污水综合排放标准GB 8978-1996》一级排放标准。技术经济分析表明，菌剂强化处理炼油废水在建设成本、运行成本上分别降低38%、49%，具有良好的技术经济优势。 苯酚冲击下功能菌响应机制研究表明：不同浓度苯酚冲击下，生物学指标生物量、脱氢酶酶活、1,2-双加氧酶酶活对冲击都有不同程度的响应，其响应敏感程度为脱氢酶酶活＞生物量＞1,2-双加氧酶酶活。1,2-双加氧酶酶活与COD 降解率相关性良好，可表征苯酚降解过程，确认为调控重点。以此为指导研制出苯酚降解功能菌抗冲击激活促进剂，可有效调控功能菌对有毒污染物苯酚的降解效果，1000mg/L 苯酚冲击下，经调控，其COD 去除率较对照提高20%，降解时间缩短16%以上。其对生物学指标的调控效果为1,2-双加氧酶酶活＞生物量＞脱氢酶酶活，验证了功能菌在苯酚冲击下的响应机制。研究表明菌剂强化处理炼油废水切实可行，具有良好的技术经济优势。有毒污染物冲击下废水生物处理系统响应机制研究为抗冲击调控提供了新的研究思路。 Currently, China’s oil refining industry is developing rapidly and has become the second largest all over the world. The oil refining industry is one of the major pollution industries in our country. The pilot scale study and engineering application research were conducted aiming at the problems in refining wastewater such as poor treatment stability and water quality, poor anti-shock capacity and expensive running cost, etc., so as to provide theoretical references and technological supports for the engineering application and popularization of microbial preparation in wastewater treatment. Also, the response mechanism of functional microbe under shock of different phenol concentrations, which is the main pollutants in refinery wastewater, was studied. Based on this result, functional microbe activation accelerator was developed, and the regulation effect of functional microbe biological index under phenol shocking were studied, in order to provide theoretical basis and technological support for regulation of toxic shocking of wastewater biological treatment. The result of pilot scale research indicated: for treatment of refinery wastewater in bioaugmention treatment system of microbial preparation, the COD and NH4+-N average value of effluent was 86.7 and 7.6 mg/L, Comparing with normal biological treatment system, the average removal rates of COD, NH4+-N increased 35.47%,59.28% separately by bioaugmention treatment system, which showed better anti-shocking capacity, the volumetric load r of COD and NH4+-N reached 2.42 kg/(m3·d) and 0.139 kg/(m3·d), respectively. The research on engineering application of refinery wastewater bioaugmentation treatment by microbial preparation indicated:the average concentrations of effluent COD and NH4+-N in the bioaugmentation treatment system were 85.05 and 8.4mg/L, which increased by 25.1% and 28.7% comparing with normal biological treatment system of refinery wastewater, And the effluent quality meets the first grade of discharging standard of National Integrated Wastewater Discharge Standard GB 8978-1996. The economic analysis of technology indicated: the demonstration project of bioaugmentation treatment of refinery wastewater by microbial preparation decreased by 38% in construction cost and 49% in running cost. This technology has economic benefits. The response mechanism of functional microbe under phenol shock indicated: biological index such as the biomass concentration, dehydrogenase and 1,2-dioxygenase had different responses under phenol shocking of different concentrations. The response sensitivity of different biological index under phenol shocking of different concentrations is: dehydogenase activity ＞ biomass ＞1,2-dioxygenase activity, and high correlation of 1,2-dioxygenase and COD degradation percentage is achieved, thus 1,2-dioxygenase could be used to reflect the degradation situation of pollutants. So, 1,2-dioxygenase is the keypoint of regulation. The anti-shock activation accelerator of phenol degradation functional microbe was primarily developed. The results indicated: the activation accelerator could regulate the degradation effect of toxic substance-phenol by functional microbe effectively. For the functional microbe treatment system under phenol shocking of 1000mg/L, the COD degradation rate increased by 20% and the degradation time reduced by more than 16% under regulation of activation accelerator. The regulation effects of biological index are: 1,2-dioxygenase ＞ biomass ＞ dehydrogenase. In this way, the response mechanism of functional microbe under toxic shocking is verified. The result indicated: the augmented microbial preparation treatment of refinery wastewater is applicable. It has many technical and economical advantages. The research results of responses mechanism of wastewater treatment system on toxic pollutants would offer a new idea for regulation of anti-shock.

流程企业计划调度体系结构研究

以石化企业为背景,在深入分析流程企业计划调度系统结构特征的基础上,结合流程企业计划调度的关键目标,提出了一种基于模型的中心化流程企业计划调度通用结构,突出了计划调度的中心地位.以此为指导,进一步建立并实现了基于知识的智能计划调度总体结构,为流程企业生产系统的运行优化提供了方法论的指导.

Development of a triple stage heat transformer for the recycling of low temperature heat energy

Absorption heat transformers are thermodynamic systems which are capable of recycling industrial waste heat energy by increasing its temperature. Triple stage heat transformers (TAHTs) can increase the temperature of this waste heat by up to approximately 145˚C. The principle factors influencing the thermodynamic performance of a TAHT and general points of operating optima were identified using a multivariate statistical analysis, prior to using heat exchange network modelling techniques to dissect the design of the TAHT and systematically reassemble it in order to minimise internal exergy destruction within the unit. This enabled first and second law efficiency improvements of up to 18.8% and 31.5% respectively to be achieved compared to conventional TAHT designs. The economic feasibility of such a thermodynamically optimised cycle was investigated by applying it to an oil refinery in Ireland, demonstrating that in general the capital cost of a TAHT makes it difficult to achieve acceptable rates of return. Decreasing the TAHT's capital cost may be achieved by redesigning its individual pieces of equipment and reducing their size. The potential benefits of using a bubble column absorber were therefore investigated in this thesis. An experimental bubble column was constructed and used to track the collapse of steam bubbles being absorbed into a hotter lithium bromide salt solution. Extremely high mass transfer coefficients of approximately 0.0012m/s were observed, showing significant improvements over previously investigated absorbers. Two separate models were developed, namely a combined heat and mass transfer model describing the rate of collapse of the bubbles, and a stochastic model describing the hydrodynamic motion of the collapsing vapour bubbles taking into consideration random fluctuations observed in the experimental data. Both models showed good agreement with the collected data, and demonstrated that the difference between the solution's temperature and its boiling temperature is the primary factor influencing the absorber's performance.

Effect of Bauxol on properties of cement pastes

This paper presents the results of an experimental investigation carried out to evaluate the influence of Bauxsol, an artificially neutralised bauxite refinery residue (NBRR), on various properties of cement pastes. It was found that the NBRR does not have any pozzolanic properties and hence cannot be used as a supplementary cementitious material in concrete. In order to evaluate the effect of adding the product to Portland cement (PC) pastes, fresh properties (i.e. standard consistency and slump), setting time and heat of hydration were measured. In addition, its influence on chemical changes and compressive strength was investigated. It was found that the addition of this NBRR resulted in a decrease in compressive strength beyond 7 days. The setting time decreased with an increase in NBRR content in PC pastes. The rate of heat evolution for NBRR pastes was greater than that of the PC pastes, but a corresponding increase in the quantity of calcium hydroxide was not found. Therefore, it was concluded that unidentified hydration products when Bauxsol was used in PC pastes might have been the reason for the decrease in setting times.

Combination of CFD and DOE to analyse solid particle erosion in elbows

Solid particle erosion is a major concern in the engineering industry, particularly where transport of slurry flow is involved. Such flow regimes are characteristic of those in alumina refinement plants. The entrainment of particulate matter, for example sand, in the Bayer liquor can cause severe erosion in pipe fittings, especially in those which redirect the flow. The considerable costs involved in the maintenance and replacement of these eroded components led to an interest in research into erosion prediction by numerical methods at Rusal Aughinish alumina refinery, Limerick, Ireland, and the University of Limerick. The first stage of this study focused on the use of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to simulate solid particle erosion in elbows. Subsequently an analysis of the factors that affect erosion of elbows was performed using design of experiments (DOE) techniques. Combining CFD with DOE harnesses the computational power of CFD in the most efficient manner for prediction of elbow erosion. An analysis of the factors that affect the erosion of elbows was undertaken with the intention of producing an erosion prediction model. © 2009 Taylor & Francis.

Performance assessment of cascade control loopswith non-Gaussian disturbances using entropy information

Cascade control is one of the routinely used control strategies in industrial processes because it can dramatically improve the performance of single-loop control, reducing both the maximum deviation and the integral error of the disturbance response. Currently, many control performance assessment methods of cascade control loops are developed based on the assumption that all the disturbances are subject to Gaussian distribution. However, in the practical condition, several disturbance sources occur in the manipulated variable or the upstream exhibits nonlinear behaviors. In this paper, a general and effective index of the performance assessment of the cascade control system subjected to the unknown disturbance distribution is proposed. Like the minimum variance control (MVC) design, the output variances of the primary and the secondary loops are decomposed into a cascade-invariant and a cascade-dependent term, but the estimated ARMA model for the cascade control loop based on the minimum entropy, instead of the minimum mean squares error, is developed for non-Gaussian disturbances. Unlike the MVC index, an innovative control performance index is given based on the information theory and the minimum entropy criterion. The index is informative and in agreement with the expected control knowledge. To elucidate wide applicability and effectiveness of the minimum entropy cascade control index, a simulation problem and a cascade control case of an oil refinery are applied. The comparison with MVC based cascade control is also included.

NMR in the characterization of heavy residual procedural streams

The main objective of this work was to monitor a set of physical-chemical properties of heavy oil procedural streams through nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, in order to propose an analysis procedure and online data processing for process control. Different statistical methods which allow to relate the results obtained by nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy with the results obtained by the conventional standard methods during the characterization of the different streams, have been implemented in order to develop models for predicting these same properties. The real-time knowledge of these physical-chemical properties of petroleum fractions is very important for enhancing refinery operations, ensuring technically, economically and environmentally proper refinery operations. The first part of this work involved the determination of many physical-chemical properties, at Matosinhos refinery, by following some standard methods important to evaluate and characterize light vacuum gas oil, heavy vacuum gas oil and fuel oil fractions. Kinematic viscosity, density, sulfur content, flash point, carbon residue, P-value and atmospheric and vacuum distillations were the properties analysed. Besides the analysis by using the standard methods, the same samples were analysed by nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. The second part of this work was related to the application of multivariate statistical methods, which correlate the physical-chemical properties with the quantitative information acquired by nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Several methods were applied, including principal component analysis, principal component regression, partial least squares and artificial neural networks. Principal component analysis was used to reduce the number of predictive variables and to transform them into new variables, the principal components. These principal components were used as inputs of the principal component regression and artificial neural networks models. For the partial least squares model, the original data was used as input. Taking into account the performance of the develop models, by analysing selected statistical performance indexes, it was possible to conclude that principal component regression lead to worse performances. When applying the partial least squares and artificial neural networks models better results were achieved. However, it was with the artificial neural networks model that better predictions were obtained for almost of the properties analysed. With reference to the results obtained, it was possible to conclude that nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy combined with multivariate statistical methods can be used to predict physical-chemical properties of petroleum fractions. It has been shown that this technique can be considered a potential alternative to the conventional standard methods having obtained very promising results.

Implementação da diretiva 2010/75/EU - emissões industriais. Estudo de caso: refinaria de Sines

Tese de mestrado integrado em Engenharia da Energia e do Ambiente, apresentada à Universidade de Lisboa, através da Faculdade de Ciências, 2016

Low-Carbon Cement with Waste Oil-Cracking Catalyst Incorporation

The present paper shows preliminary results of an ongoing project which one of the goals is to investigate the viability of using waste FCC catalyst (wFCC), originated from Portuguese oil refinery, to produce low carbon blended cements. For this purpose, four blended cements were produced by substituting cement CEM I 42.5R up to 20% (w/w) by waste FCC catalyst. Initial and final setting times, consistency of standard paste, soundness and compressive strengths after 2, 7 and 28 days were measured. It was observed that the wFCC blended cements developed similar strength, at 28 days, compared to the reference cement, CEM I 42.5R. Moreover, cements with waste FCC catalyst incorporation up to 15% w/w meet European Standard EN 197-1 specifications for CEM II/A type cement, in the 42.5R strength class.

ECO-betão com adição de resíduo da indústria petrolífera

Dissertação de natureza Científica para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Civil na Área de Especialização em Edificações