In an era characterized by rapid technological evolution and growing sustainability consciousness, the advancements in petrochemical refining are critical to ensure that industry remains competitive, sustainable, and capable of meeting future demands.

Leading experts from the Indian petrochemical sector discussed the latest trends in petrochemical refining at the 4th edition of NextGen Chemical and Petrochemical Summit 2024 organized by the Indian Chemical News in Mumbai on July 11-12, 2024.   

The eighth session, ‘Advances in Petrochemical Refining for Improving Efficiencies’ on the second day was moderated by Pravin Prashant, Executive Editor, Indian Chemical News.

Sharing his thoughts on improving efficiency in petrochemical manufacturing, Pramod Kumar, General Manager - R&D, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited said: "In a naphtha cracker, the thermal cracking process typically has the temperature around 850 degree celsius. There are certain technologies that can be adopted like the catalytic cracking of naphtha so the temperature can be brought down to 600-650 degree celsius. When we are going for any new technology for the cracker that can be adopted, it has a lot of advantages such as energy saving. Also, the CO2 emission will be almost nil if we go for the electric furnace. There are certain developments happening in the refining sites and one of them is for distillations. We use multiple distillation units so there is a concept called divided wall column to improve the separation efficiencies. In the area of membranes, there are new technological advancements coming up and these membranes can also be looked into for the separation of the molecules as we have a lot of energy guzzlers into the petrochemical complexes.  Though only a few demonstrations have happened, there is a lot of potential.”

“When we are all talking about net zero and CO2 emissions reductions, there are various ways which can be looked into and one is putting the bio-based materials into the crackers. It comes with its own challenges like oxygenates could be higher and there could be some metals and the silica contents that needs to be pre-treated prior to putting into the crackers. In terms of circular economy, there are certain waste polymers that can be depolymerized and those plastic oils can be processed into the crackers and of course the contaminants and everything has to be taken care of. For achieving the net zero, similarly, use of bio based oil in the crackers could certainly bring in cost advantage. There are many studies done in this regard and it will help in reducing the CO2 levels. There are a lot of cost advantages of the circular polymers in the markets so that's again a business case coming up into that area,” added Kumar.

Gaurang Mishra, Joint Director, Centre for High Technology, Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas said, "The petrochemical refining integration is one of the aspects where heat and mass transfer streams are being shared. It is very energy efficient process and there are also a lot of technological developments we have come across. Earlier we used to have tail end crackers but right now we have front end crackers. The front end hydrogenation crackers are also very efficient because in the separation you need less amount for process and second aspect of energy efficiency can be achieved by the electrification. So that is the learning that we have from the refiner benchmarking outcomes. One of the recommendations is that your network size should be reduced right in terms of solomon benchmarking as there is energy intensity EI figure that says if you reduce 1% of steam network size it is corresponding to one point improvement in EI value, an impressive figure. Industries are taking their call and they are going forward for more motorized driven turbines rather than relying on the steam driven turbines. That is one aspect and electric heating is another aspect. For energy efficiency, the first important thing is that the right molecule should be treated in the right manner. So if you are processing a molecule where it is not supposed to be processed you are losing efficiency.”

“If you compare in terms of feedstock, it is mainly driven by the availability. If you talk about Asia and India, it is mostly reliant on the Naphtha based crackers which as compared to gas based crackers have huge amounts of efficiency and margin difference as well. There are things moving forward and we are having some technologies where if you want propylene you need not to go for processing entirely through the crackers. You have to go for PD operation in a very innovative way and there is a lot of capacity addition is coming up in China and in India also there are two plants that are under commissioning phase. That is going to be game changer and also there is some advancement in terms of catalyst which improves the separation process. A lot of things renewables can also be incorporated so that is a way we can also decarbonize the sector,” added Mishra.

Dr Pravesh Kumar, Deputy General Manager, Indian Oil Corporation said, “The major problems that the refining industry is facing today is the decarbonization and energy transition. When you look at the energy transition, the gasoline demand is going to peak somewhere around 2030 while the diesel demand is going to peak somewhere around 2040. Whatever the refineries are producing needs to be converted to the petrochemicals as demand is going to increase from around 27 MMT to around 87 MMT by 2040. Therefore, there is a lot of integration between the refinery and petrochemicals that needs to be done to improve the efficiency. First of all the cooker unit in the refineries which produce around 30% coke need to be converted to the hydrogen technologies which gives the liquids that can be converted to the petrochemicals. In the future, we will not be requiring liquid fuels and under the COTC configuration, the crude oil can be directly converted to chemicals. While a typical refinery as of now is having around 6 to 10% of petrochemical intensity index but with the COTC configuration it can go up to 70% of the petrochemicals.”

“In terms of renewable energy, the refineries of the future will be producing bio oil. The Indian Oil R&D team has also developed a process in which the best plastic can be directly processed to the cooker unit and can be converted to fuels. There is a 2G ethanol plant at the Panipat refinery where the rice straw can be converted to ethanol and then it is blended with the gasoline. In case it is surplus, ethanol can also be converted to ethylene as a green prochemical. Then there is 3G ethanol where the industrial waste is being converted to ethanol so as to help refineries to meet their decarbonization and net zero targets,” added Dr Kumar.

Sharing his insights on the role of digitalization in improving inefficiencies within petrochemical refining, Partha Sur, General Manager – Technology, Haldia Petrochemicals said, "Petrochemicals have an entire value chain that needs to be streamlined for best inefficiencies. I come from petrochemical manufacturing and it comprises many subsets whether it is production safety or operations maintenance. Presently there are different functional units that add to the complexities. Here digitalization could play a big role. We must understand that we have different kinds of functional groups and like two humans sitting together side by side, they also talk to each other. Every complex integration and the processes can be controlled under Process Safety Management, a large part of the whole subsets that can be built into a digitalization. Unless those parts are well taken care of, the part of the operation will not come up the way we expect. The three basic elements that are important are the power of conceptualization, capacity to compare and collaboration.”

“As digital technologies, automation, big data, and new catalyst technologies continue to evolve, they will drive significant gains in productivity, sustainability, and profitability. Digital twins and AIML are of great help in advance process control. We bring in real time data, structured and unstructured data and build on capabilities and capacities. We can use analytics to prepare ourselves and there are many engines that can be built on it and we get a different kind of inferences based on these actual performance. With advanced process control possibly you can maximize the asset efficiency to give higher value from the same kind of people, same asset, same plant and of course every time you are exceeding the target  you know the AIML and the digital twin can serve you better from the operations perspective of it," added Sur.

The Summit was supported by DCM Shriram Chemicals as principal partner, Somaiya Vidyavihar University as academia partner, Cadmatic as platinum partner and Andhra Pradesh Economic Development Board (APEDB), Govt. of Andhra Pradesh as state partner.

Gold partners for NextGen Chemicals & Petrochemicals were Epsilon Carbon, Forbes Marshall, Gharda Chemicals, Indofil Industries, Ingenero, IPCO, Jaaji Technologies, Moglix, PIP, Port of Antwerp - Bruges, RIECO and Re Sustainability. Associate Partners are: HPCL and Nuberg EPC.

Supporting partners included Aarayaa Advisory Services, Archroma, India Glycols and Tata Steel Special Economic Zone and industry association partners are: ACFI, AMAI, CropLife India, Gujarat Chemical Association and PMFAI.