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Decarbonization of the Iranian Refinery Network with the Water-Energy-CO2 Nexus Approach and the Feasibilty Study of Expanding Iran’s Refining Capacity by Mini-Refineries

Adibzadeh, Mohammad Hossein | 2022

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  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 55446 (06)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Chemical and Petroleum Engineering
  6. Advisor(s): Rashtchian, Davood; Sharifzadeh, Mahdi
  7. Abstract:
  8. Iran, as a major contributor in Oil and Gas resources, plays a significant role in global energy supply chain. Iran was the fifth-largest crude oil producer in OPEC in 2020 and the third-largest natural gas producer in the world in 2019. It holds some of the world’s largest deposits of proved oil and natural gas reserves, ranking as the world’s third-largest and second-largest reserve holder of oil and natural gas, respectively, in 2020. At the end of 2020, Iran accounted for 25% of oil reserves in the Middle East and 12% in the world. Currently, ten refineries are responsible to refine oil and produce petroleum products to meet the market demands. Especially, the construction of Persian Gulf Star Refinery" has had an enormous effect on production of gasoline. The problem with Iranian refineries is that they are not efficient and it is worth to mention that some Iranian refineries are aged 50 years or more. But, the main problem with Iranian refineries is that they do not operate in a sustainable manner, and if it was not for the extensive governmental support, they should have been closed many years ago. Therefore, the need to reform the refinery infrastructure for the years to come is inevitable. The future refinery supply chain must operate in a sustainable manner, yet economically justifiable. The focus of this research is to analyze the sustainability of new refineries from water, energy, and environmental stand points. This goal is justified by the geographical and environmental situation of Iran. Iran is an arid country with uneven distribution of water resources, which are prone to depletion. In addition, due to inefficient and old configuration of current refineries, considerable CO2 amounts are emitted to the atmosphere. The need for replacing and construction new refineries considering environmental and natural resources regulations are two conflicting objectives, and to suggest the optimum modern infrastructure refineries, one must model and solve this complex optimization problem. In fact, water, energy, and CO2 mitigation networks are internally connected; CO2 abatement technologies put more stress on water and energy resources. Therefore, a delicate set of answers must be obtained by the optimization framework to achieve the balance of the water, energy, and CO2 nexus. Treated municipal wastewater resources are promising sources of water to exploit for both steam generation and cooling purposes and currently, these resources are used for the main purpose of agricultural irrigation. Of course, a pretreatment process is needed for these water resources to meet the standards of refinery feed water, which is costly, but the aridity of Iran has pushed the industries to search for new and sustainable water resources, and treated municipal wastewater seems like a competent candidate. In modeling and optimization stages of the supply chain, the main focus is on the economic aspect of the solution. Due to fluctuations in crude oil and petroleum products prices, the stochastic nature of the economic objective is also considered. Different scenarios are generated to have a more realistic approach to the economic objective.
  9. Keywords:
  10. Stochastic Analysis ; Uncertainty ; Water and Energy Nexus ; Carbon Dioxide Absorption ; Water-Energy-Carbon Dioxide Nexus ; Refinery Optimization

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