Economía ecológica y gestión tecnológica integral de aguas sulfurosas en la refinería de Cienfuegos para minimizar emisiones

Despite the stringent international standards, the oil refinery in Cienfuegos still emits contaminant effluents, which will increase with the construction of new process units. This study focused on the sulphuric waters to propose a methodology for the comprehensive technological management of these waters in the oil hydro treatment process. Three technological variants were presented as to meet that objective, being able to select the most favorable one to minimize the water contamination with sulphur and its derivate emissions. In order to fully evaluate the proposed technological variants, a methodology was developed using ecological economics tools. The Life Cycle Analysis was applied, by means of the SimaPro 7.1software; and the evaluation was made with the Eco Speed method to minimize the uncertainty. An economic evaluation was made, including the external costs for a more integral analysis, which, along with the ecological indicators allowed selecting the best technological variant. As outstanding results a comprehensive evaluation was achieved, with a positive impact due to the implementation of the variant selected. The achievements are given by the recovery of 98, 27 % of the process water, and an increase of the sulphur recovery from 94 to 99, 8 %, at the same time achieving to reduce the emissions from 12 200 to 116 mg/Nm3 as SO2.