A Techno-Economical Evaluation Study for Upgrading Sarir Oil Refinery and Maximizing Gasoline Production

Oil refineries have become increasingly more efficient over time. Therefore, huge efforts are being made to invest in better processes and technologies that save energy and maximize the production of high-value products, particularly, gasoline. In this study, two scenarios are proposed to upgrade the Sarir Oil Refinery for increasing its capacity from 10,000 BPD to 120,000 BPD by adding new units of vacuum distillation and Delayed Coking or Fluid Catalytic Cracking (FCC) unit. The production rates of all units are obtained through material balance calculations. Finally, an economical evaluation is carried out to determine if the proposed projects meet the profitability criteria of the refinery and to decide which refinery scenario is techno-economically feasible and maximizes the production of gasoline more than the other. The observational results revealed that the best refinery scenario is the one that uses atmospheric distillation and FCC units as it has less payout time (3.6 years), higher internal rate of return (110%) and higher production of gasoline.