Comparative analysis and evaluation of three crude oil vacuum distillation processes for process selection

There exists three practicable crude oil vacuum distillation processes and different processes have a significant impact on material and energy performances, including product yield, economic potential, heat recovery and the efficiencies of recoverable energy and recoverable exergy. Process selection is an important and difficult task for designers with various targets since the material and energy performances of a process do not coordinate with each other. In this work, an approach with simultaneous considerations of material and energy performances is proposed to comparatively analyze and evaluate the three processes, in order to provide insights for designers to screen a suitable process and vacuum furnace outlet temperature. The approach is conducted in three steps. In the first step, a simulation model is rebuilt to obtain basic material and energy data. In the second step, comparative analyses and evaluations are performed to measure the material and energy performances of three process options under the same operating conditions. In the last step, the variations of the material and energy performances are further investigated to determine the vacuum furnace outlet temperature. The results indicate that the cycle process has the highest product yield and best economic potential but the lowest efficiencies of recoverable energy and recoverable exergy, while the drawn process has the highest efficiencies of recoverable energy and recoverable exergy but the worst economic potential. The results also demonstrate that the selection of a vacuum distillation process and the determination of the vacuum furnace outlet temperature play a critical role in designing a crude oil vacuum distillation process.