%0 Journal Article
%T Rethinking Petroleum Products Certification
%A Thiago Feital
%A P¨²blio Lima
%A Jos¨¦ Carlos Pinto
%A Maur¨ªcio B. de Souza Jr.
%A Gilberto Xavier
%A Mario Jorge Lima
%A Marcel Joly
%J Journal of Petroleum Engineering
%D 2013
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2013/594368
%X Facing various challenges in the everchanging refining landscape, it is essential that refiners raise their operations to new levels of performance. Advances in in-line blending (ILB) technology accuracy and reliability have encouraged refiners to take a step forward. Having ILB as a precursor, a new methodology is in concern: the so-called in-line certification (ILC) procedure. Blending processes make use of in-line measurements which, at least in principle, can be used to certificate the product, if the precision and accuracy of available in-line measurements are comparable to measurements provided by standard off-line tests. Such procedure may allow for significant reduction in refinery¡¯s tank farming and product inventory, increase of process flexibility, and reliability with benefits to company image. The main limitations for real-world ILC applications in the oil industry remain at the legal and technological levels. This paper proposes novel concepts and foundations of a basic in-line certification model for petroleum products regarding current interdisciplinary challenges and promising solutions. 1. Introduction Petroleum refining is one of the most important industries, comprising many different and complicated processes with various possible configurations. Globally, it processes more materials than any other industry [1]. Due to the scale and significance of this industry, it becomes more crucial to address the considerable challenges that the industry faces today and in the future. Production planning and scheduling optimization are essential tasks to maximize refinery¡¯s profit margins and to remain in the competitive market. In this sense, several opportunities strictly related to refinery production optimization could be identified. At the strategic level, the supply chain optimization may be posed as a master problem, since there are numerous trade-offs between decisions made at the various nodes of its superstructure in which the refinery planning is embedded. At the tactical level, two major challenges should be addressed by refiners [2]. The first one is that refining industry needs to effectively evaluate process performances to identify options for producing desirable products and meeting increasing constrained environment regulations. The second challenge refers to major transformation from an industry of mainly producing fuels for transportation to one that makes a wide set of value-added products, including chemicals, speciality products, electricity, and hydrogen. In a scenario in which the world economic growth slowed down and
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jpe/2013/594368/