Most petroleum processing processes are carried out at high temperatures, sometimes as high as 500℃. To raise the raw materials at room temperature to such a high temperature, you have to use a stove to heat them, so when you enter the refinery, you will see many chimneys of the stove. These furnaces are covered with vertical or horizontal alloy steel pipes that can withstand high temperature, and all kinds of oil flow in the pipes. Some burners are installed at the bottom or side of the furnace, which will emit a raging fire with a temperature as high as thousands of degrees Celsius to heat the oil flowing in the pipeline. The fuel used in the heating furnace of the refinery is the by-product gas and fuel oil of the refinery, and making full use of the heat energy of the fuel is one of the important ways to reduce the refining cost. Therefore, we should try our best to make the fuel burn completely, at the same time, we should try our best to recover the heat in the high-temperature waste gas produced by combustion, and do everything possible to improve the utilization rate of heat energy.
Petroleum and petroleum products are complex mixtures. In order to make rational use of crude oil and make products meet certain quality standards, it is often necessary to separate the oil according to its boiling point, which requires a kind of equipment called distillation column. This kind of equipment is towering into the sky, and some are as high as tens of meters. Its diameter ranges from "thin and tall" less than 1 m to "big and fat" with a diameter of about 10 m. The interiors of these towers are not empty. Some towers are filled with fillers of different shapes, while others are divided into many layers like pagodas, and rows of different forms of components are arranged on each layer. In operation, liquid flows downward from the top and steam rises from the bottom. Through repeated contact and continuous integration, the lighter components come out from the upper part of the tower, while the heavier components come out from the lower part of the tower.
Anyone who has been to an oil refinery will be surprised by the dense cobwebs of pipes in the factory. All kinds of oil and gas flowing in a certain direction in these pipelines are the "blood vessels" of the refinery. Of course, these liquids and gases will never move spontaneously, and they must rely on external forces, which involves another kind of equipment in the refinery-mechanical pumps. The so-called "compressor" mainly refers to the compressor that can increase the gas pressure under normal pressure. Generally speaking, "pump" is no stranger. Oil pumps are not widely used in refineries, but some of them are hot oil pumps, and the temperature of the pumped oil is even as high as 400℃. In order to prevent leakage, these oil pumps, especially hot oil pumps, are made of high-quality materials, so you must never use water pumps instead of oil pumps, otherwise there will be a big accident.
Some components of crude oil in refinery sometimes have to be chemically treated to make better use of it. In order to carry out chemical reaction, a kind of equipment called reactor is needed, and most of this equipment is filled with various catalysts with various functions. With these catalysts, raw oil can be converted into various products according to people's requirements. These chemical reactions are often carried out at high temperature and high pressure, so reactors are generally high-pressure vessels made of special alloy steel. The manufacture of these containers should not be taken lightly. It must be manufactured by a qualified unit, otherwise the personal safety of the operators cannot be guaranteed.
In addition to heating furnace, distillation tower, pump and reactor, there are many other auxiliary equipment such as heat exchanger and condenser in refinery, which are also essential.