A Case Study for Benzene Reduction in the Final Gasoline Pool of Existing Refineries

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has developed recent limitations regarding fuel specifications and pollutants, which refiners are required to follow. Based on Mobile Source Air Toxics (MSAT) II regulations, the average benzene content in the gasoline pool should not exceed 0.62 vol. % [1].Designers of new refineries are able to consider the mentioned limitations from the beginning. In contrast, existing refineries have to modify the operating conditions of existing units, or in the event of failure add new units by spending high expenses, in order to achieve mentioned environmental restrictions.Since the gasoline production processes depend on refineries' configurations, the quality of the final gasoline pool would depend on their relevant process units. In some cases, refiners have to inject other imported materials as octane booster to the final gasoline pool in order to obtain the desired gasoline specifications (e.g. Research Octane Number (RON) and benzene content).This article attempts to investigate a conventional crude oil refinery challenge for achieving benzene content as per MSAT II regulations for various research octane numbers

Keywords:

Benzene Reduction , Gasoline Pool , Refinery , EPA , MSAT II