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|b Refineries worldwide have been facing several challenges affect its margin resulted from the environmental legislation, decline in crude oil quality, and changing product demand patterns. To cope with these challenges, refiners have been forced to look for an efficient, economical, and environmentally safe utilization of low value by products, such as petroleum coke, refinery wastes and heavy petroleum residue, that are peaking up as a result of the increase of processing heavy crude oils. The purpose of this study is to explain the benefits of applying Coal To Liquid technology in refineries, as one of the attractive solutions to convert the refinery wastes and heavy residues to a variety of valuable products, include electricity, steam, hydrogen, chemicals and liquid fuels. The first chapter describes principles, technical status, and performance of coal to liquid processes that are available for producing liquids from coal, the environmental issues associated with the technology and the challenges faced the early commercial experience. The second chapter highlights the main features and benefits of integrating gasification technology with the petroleum refinery processes, such as the ability to produce a high-quality syngas product that can be used for energy production or as a building block for other chemical manufacturing processes and flexibility to use several types of feedstocks, such as petroleum coke, heavy refinery residuals, and secondary oil-bearing refinery materials. The third chapter presents a series of successful case studies of applying gasification technology in petroleum refineries worldwide and in OAPEC member countries. A great emphasis is placed on the advantages and lessons learned from each case study. The study concludes that, the use of gasification technology in petroleum refineries is expected to increase due to the significant benefits. Furthermore, there is a need for more continued technology advances on improving the economics and minimizing the environmental impacts of petroleum coke gasification technologies and processes.
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