Refinery Technology
The evolution of petroleum product demand and quality specifications, of crude oil supply and, more generally, of the economic environment has a profound impact on the EU oil refining industry. Continuing to supply the market in this evolving context requires continuous adaptation, which leads to investment requirements and at the same time influences the typical refinery’s energy consumption and CO2 emissions.
Since the mid 90s Concawe has maintained a sophisticated capability for modelling EU refineries in order to assist industry in understanding and anticipating these impacts. Focused modelling studies are conducted by the Concawe Refinery Technology groups and have resulted in a number of published reports dealing with the impact on refining of such issues as implementation of new road fuel specifications resulting from the Auto-Oil programmes or the progressive reduction of the sulphur content of marine fuels.
Certain pieces of legislation require specific technical input at industry level to ensure sound scientific and technical principles are adhered to and that the industry is fairly treated. An example of this is the EU GHG Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). Concawe provides a significant technical contribution to the development of guidelines for the implementation of the ETS legislation, specifically the development of Monitoring and Reporting Guidelines and of a benchmarking scheme for refinery CO2 emissions. These contributions draw from the expertise of Concawe and its consultants in fields such as the sources of GHG emissions in refineries and the energy-intensity of individual refinery process units relative to their complexity.
A further activity for Concawe Refinery Technology is its involvement in the development of modelling tools for the analysis of biofuel blending scenarios in the context of the targets set by the Fuels Quality Directive and the Renewable Energy Directive. Concawe shares this research with the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) and EUCAR in the JEC (JRC-EUCAR-Concawe) Consortium.
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