Updated as of: Sat 30 Jun 2024, 09:20 UTC+8
A chemical plant takes an input (called feed) and process it to become the product. Let’s say we want to make plastic beads, and the feed is hydrocarbon gas. Usually in the industry, there are templates to make these plants. We need to convert our raw feed into the desired products (in reactors), but most of the processes actually involve separation, between the products and the waste (or byproducts). This knowledge is what’s called specific plant process technology. Below are some plants that I’ve worked with.
To protect confidentiality, specific information such as names (facility, or person, or project) are converted to generic names.
Oil and gas (also known as hydrocarbons, or fossil fuel) are extracted from the Earth crust, brought up to the surface, separated the components (hydrocarbon gas, hydrocarbon liquid, and water), and sent to a terminal. If those hydrocarbon reservoirs are under seabed, platforms are built above the sea surface. Each drilling platform - denoted DP in the diagram below - have wells that bring up high pressure hydrocarbons to aboveground (hence called surface), then using that high pressure, the entire fluid mixture (called full well stream or FWS) flows through a pipeline - denoted PL - to a central processing platform or CPP. Sometimes a drilling platform will pass through another drilling platform before reaching a central processing platform (like DP-C below flowing through DP-A before reaching CPP). CPP will separate the components, dump the unwanted waste (like wastewater) and export to a terminal. Sometimes it might pass through a riser platform - denoted RP - or also known as collector - before reaching the terminal. Terminal is where the products are stored (crude oil or condensate in storage tanks) and/or sold to customers (maybe power plants buying gas to generate electricity, or plants making plastic from hydrocarbon gas).
graph LR
dpa[DP-A] --PL--> cpp[CPP]
dpb[DP-B] --PL--> cpp
dpc[DP-C] --PL--> dpa
dpd[DP-D] --PL--> cpp
cpp --PL--> rp1[RP-A]
rp1 --PL--> terminal[Terminal]
Below is a typical process block diagram for a gas processing platform. Basically: