Environmental Review of Petroleum Industry Effluent Analysis

The present report deals with environmental issues in refineries and petrochemical processes.More precisely gaseous, liquid and solid effluents from processes are analysed qualitativelyand quantitatively when possible. Techniques to treat these effluents are reviewed or proposedwhen lacking and methods to do not produce these effluents are envisaged.In the part A of the report general effluents that are released from all types of processes arestudied. These effluents include fugitive emissions, flue gases from process heaters,blowdown systems emissions and wastewaters. Fugitive emissions, one of the greatestsources of VOCs can be qualified and quantified by the average emission factor approach andreduced thanks to the implementation of an LDAR program. Flue gases from process heaters,which are a major source of NOx, SOx and particulate matters can be characterized withemission factors and several techniques exist to treat or prevent these emissions. Concerningblowdown systems emissions, which are difficult to quantify, methods to minimize theseemissions are given. Finally, wastewaters treatment in petroleum industry is shortly describedbefore best management practices and pollution prevention methods are enounced.In the part B of the report four families of processes are studied: naphtha hydrotreatment,naphtha isomerization, catalytic reforming and hydrogenation in olefin plants. Each of theseprocesses is firstly described, the process flow diagram is explained and continuous andintermittent effluents are characterized. In addition to general effluents dealt with in part A, ithas been found that processes can produce other effluents such as dioxins in isomerization orcatalytic reforming units or green oils during catalyst regeneration operations.Division Industrial Ecologywww.kth.se/itm/indecowww.ima.kth.s