The State-of-the-art and Future Perspectives of World Petroleum Refining Technology
世界石油炼制技术现状及未来发展趋势

Entering into the 21st century, world petroleum refining technology is experiencing its great innovation driven by the increasing supply of heavy oils with decreasing quality and the fast increases in the demand for clean and ultra-clean vehicle fuels and petrochemical raw materials. In this review, the current situation of the world petroleum refining industry and technology is analysed and our outlook into the future technological innovations is presented. It is concluded that the main technological progress will be directed to heavy oil upgrading, cleaner transportation fuel production and the integration of refining and petrochemical businesses. For heavy oil upgrading, hydrocracking and hydrotreating technology will be the main directions, new residue FCC technology and new delayed coking should be developed further. For cleaner transportation fuel production, the main task is the desulfurization of gasoline and diesel. With the advents of various techniques, such as adsorption and biodesulfurization, the future development will be still centralized on hydro-desulfurization techniques. In the integration of refining and petrochemical businesses, new technologies based on traditional FCC process will be of increased interests to refiners because of their potential to meet the increasing demand for light olefins. Meanwhile, hydrocracking, due to its flexibility, will take the central position in the integration of refining and petrochemical businesses in 21st century.