I am currently working on a project to reduce petcoke and furnace oil in refineries. Irrespective of the crude type, there is always some generation of petcoke and FO. But as per the current norms, the Indian government is banning the use. What are the possible ways to reduce the generation by process changes in the refineries?
A Delayed Coking Unit (DCU) is a carbon rejection process that destroys Vac Resid (thermally converting to lighter products) by rejecting carbon as Petcoke. There are competing H2 addition processes ( H-Oil and LC Fining are the most popular) that will destroy vac resid(furnace oil) via H2 addition instead of carbon rejection,
Incremental amounts Vac resid can be converted to lighter products instead of Petcokevia via H2 addition by Hydrotreating Delayed Coker Feed. This will directionally reduce coke formation and produce more lighter products.
The easiest way to reduce Petcoke formation via delayed coking is to purchase lighter crudes that contain less Vacuum Residue but of course those crudes are more expensive.
I'll add to Rick Manner's answer - gasification of petcoke to create hydrogen and synthesis gas is another option. Here's a link to a review article:
Article Petroleum coke gasification: A review
Christopher, I was going to include POX to form syngas and H2 but I figured that wasn't actually reducing Petcoke - just putting it to better use. It's also an expensive option because of the cost of Cryogenic Air Separation Units You could also include replacing Delayed Coking with Flexicoking - which is almost the same as POX with air instead of O2 .
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