This paper presents an integrated refinery scheduling model and its applications for a refinery located in Jiujiang, Jiangxi, P.R.China. The model integrates a crude oil unloading and storage area, a refining area, a blending area and a product storage area of the refinery. The scheduling model can be applied for optimizing the operation, configuration and production schedule of the refinery. T...

A model predictive control (MPC) strategy is developed to determine the optimal solution of the short-term refinery production planning problem. The main objective of the proposed algorithm is to maximize the total profit and to minimize the costs regarding the refinery process over a planning horizon. The refinery planning problem is solved in discrete time over a pre-determined prediction hor...

Process simulation has been widely used in refineries for more than 30 years. Steady state and dynamic simulations are established tools for the design of new process units and optimisation (off and online) of existing facilities. While mathematical models of separation systems and other unit operations are available in most commercial process simulators, refinery reactors are very specialised ...

The depletion of fossil resources makes the transition towards renewable ones more urgent. For this purpose, synthesis strategic platform-chemicals, such as 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), represents a fundamental challenge for development feasible bio-refinery. HMF perfectly deals with necessity, because it can be obtained from hexose fraction biomass. Thanks to its high reactivity, exploited m...

Lactic acid, which can be obtained through fermentation, is an interesting compound because it can be utilized in different fields, such as in the food, pharmaceutical and chemical industries as a bio-based molecule for bio-refinery. In addition, lactic acid has recently gained more interest due to the possibility of manufacturing poly(lactic acid), a green polymer that can replace petroleum-de...

The structure of wood is so compact that enzymes are too large to penetrate into the structure and thereby attack the wood components for modifications that can be valuable for various purposes. Here we present a pretreatment method based on traditional kraft pulping, which opens the wood structure, so that enzymes are able to attack the wood components. To study this kind of chemical pretreatm...

Biomaterials from olive tree pruning are an abundant agricultural residue in various Mediterranean regions. A suggested use of this residue is its separation in a main fraction (trunks and stems with diameter > 1 cm) and a residual fraction (leaves and stems with diameter 1 < cm), using biorefinery procedures. The main fraction is cooked with ethanol, giving rise to a pulp, which can be used ei...

The conceptual framework of a new system, Collaborative Refinery, is motivated by a scenario involving the creation of an FAQ. The scenario introduces the concepts of collecting, culling, organizing and distilling. Distilling is a specialized form of collaborative authoring with support for content selection and genre. The Web-based user interface supporting access to the four conceptual functi...

Conclusions The highest incidence of allergy was recorded among refinery patients. The present study revealed that the percentages of 80 and 42 pathogenic strains were isolated from 74 and 39 allergic patients with respiratory infections from refinery and nonrefinery hospitalized patients respectively. The high incidence of asthma and respiratory infections in the oil refinery plant could be du...