A Lifecycle Assessment of Petroleum Processing Activities in the United Kingdom
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From Ground to Gate: A lifecycle assessment of petroleum processing activities in the United Kingdom Reyn OBorn Master in Industrial Ecology Submission date: June 2012 Supervisor: Anders Hammer Strømman, EPT Co-supervisor: Olav Bolland, EPT Norwegian University of Science and Technology Department of Energy and Process Engineering Abstract Petroleum products are an important component of today’s societal energy needs. Petroleum powers everything from the vehicles people rely on, to the ships that carry goods around the world, to the heating of homes in colder climates. The petroleum process chain is complex and the environmental impacts within the process chain are not always well understood. A deeper understanding of where emissions come from along the process chain will help policy makers in the path towards a less carbon intensive society. One of the core processes of the petroleum process chain is refining. Petroleum refining is a complicated process which can have varying crude inputs and varying fuel outputs depending upon the refinery make-up, the crude blend and the market conditions at the time of production. The goal of this paper is to introduce a lifecycle analysis on the UK petroleum refining sector. Where emissions occur along the process chain and which fuels cause the most pollution on a per unit basis will be reported and discussed using lifecycle analysis framework. The refining process is difficult to maneuver around and it can be difficult to discern which processes create which products. The analysis is broadened to understand the refining emissions associated with different fuel types at both a process and country level. The results can be relevant for environmental policy and decision makers. The original intent of this paper was to include gas processing. After discussion between advisor and student, the gas processing was not included after mutual agreement. Acknowledgements This study could not have been organized without the guidance of Anders Hammer-Strømman who was the main advisor for all work. Nick Vandervell and Andy Roberts of UKPIA were the sources of much information. The work of DECC provided the basis for comparison while the NAEI had the necessary refinery information to perform analysis. Anthony Pak must be thanked for his previous work on UK petroleum extraction which was used in this study. Additional thanks to Vladimir Volsky, who helped shape the dialogue of the paper and provided personal guidance when asked. 2 Table of Contents List of figures ........................................................................................................................................... 4 List of abbreviations ................................................................................................................................ 5 Abstract ................................................................................................................................................... 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 6 State of the field .................................................................................................................................. 8 Motivation ......................................................................................................................................... 11 Case description .................................................................................................................................... 12 The refining process and theory ........................................................................................................ 12 The UK petroleum economy.............................................................................................................. 16 The UK refining sector ....................................................................................................................... 20 Expanding the system boundaries on UK refining ............................................................................ 23 Research goals ................................................................................................................................... 24 Methodology ......................................................................................................................................... 26 Lifecycle analysis process .................................................................................................................. 26 Lifecycle inventory preparation ........................................................................................................ 27 Lifecycle inventory analysis ............................................................................................................... 30 Impact assessment ............................................................................................................................ 37 Results ................................................................................................................................................... 39 Refinery level emissions and production results .............................................................................. 39 Impact assessment results ................................................................................................................ 44 Lifecycle analysis scenario results ..................................................................................................... 49 Benchmarking .................................................................................................................................... 53 Discussion .............................................................................................................................................. 57 Completed objectives ........................................................................................................................ 57 Implications ....................................................................................................................................... 60 Results discussion .............................................................................................................................. 65 Areas for further research ................................................................................................................. 67 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 69 Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................. 2 Works Cited ........................................................................................................................................... 70 Appendix ................................................................................................................................................ 73 3 List of figures Figure 1 - The simplified petroleum process chain ................................................................................. 7 Figure 2 - UK total production and CO2 emissions per kt ....................................................................... 8 Figure 3 - Overview of main emissions data sources ............................................................................ 10 Figure 4 - Petroleum distillation column (Energy Institute) .................................................................. 13 Figure 5 - Typical Petroleum Refinery Configuration ............................................................................ 14 Figure 6 - Petroleum production by fuel type and total (in kilotons) in the UK, 1995-2011 ................ 16 Figure 7 - Petroleum production and consumption patterns, UK, 2005-2011 ..................................... 18 Figure 8 - Diesel and Petrol demand and production, UK, 2005-2011 ................................................. 19 Figure 9 - Gross combustion emissions of petroleum fuels by type, UK, 2000-09 ............................... 20 Figure 10 - Map of refineries in the UK ................................................................................................. 21 Figure 11 - Statistical overview of UK refineries ................................................................................... 21 Figure 12 - Mt CO2-eq total for all refineries in the UK, 1990-2010 ..................................................... 22 Figure 13 - Ground to Gate Petroleum Refinery Process Flow Diagram ............................................... 23 Figure 14 - Lifecycle assessment framework ......................................................................................... 27 Figure 15 - UK Refinery throughput and and output of petroleum products ....................................... 28 Figure 16 - Refinery Output and Product mix, source of information .................................................. 28 Figure 17 - Fuel output mix, scenario model refineries ........................................................................ 30 Figure 18 - Process requirements matrix .............................................................................................. 31 Figure 19 - UK Fuel prices and calorific values ...................................................................................... 35 Figure 20 - Proportion of fuel output, UK, 2009 ..................................................................................