Thermodynamic, Economic and Environmental Benefits of the Integration Between Oil Refineries and IGCCs

IGCC technology enables environmentally-friendly generation of electricity from high sulphur content refinery residuals and, at the same time, higher production of light and middle distillates over a wide range of crude quality. The latter represents a particularly valuable feature because environmental regulations are driving toward larger market shares of lighter and cleaner distillates and, at the same time, crude quality is declining.This paper illustrates how the integration between a refinery process and an IGCC can reduce primary energy consumption and emissions, as well as improve the economic prospects of the refinery. The analysis moves from the specific case of the ISAB-Energy plant recently completed in Priolo (Italy) and then assesses the thermodynamic, economic and environmental benefits achievable by the upgrade of the whole Italian refinery system under three sets of assumptions: IGCC with the same features and cost of the ISAB plant; advanced IGCC (LHV efficiency 46%) with a specific cost of 1400 $/kW; advanced IGCC with a specific cost of 1200 $/kW.If all Italian refineries were integrated with advanced IGCCs (with natural gas fired Combined Cycles covering the deficit of electricity production), national primary energy consumption would decrease by more than five millions tons of oil equivalent per year, CO2 emissions would decrease by almost 15 million t/y and there would be substantial reductions of SOx, NOx and particulate emissions. If the overall cost of this restructuring were totally charged to the reduction of CO2 emissions, each ton of avoided CO2 emissions would costs between 4,5 to 29,3 $.Copyright © 2001 by ASME