A scenario-based clean gasoline production strategy for China National Petroleum Corporation

Abstract

Facing increasingly strict environmental regulations on transportation fuels, China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC), the second largest supplier of petroleum products in China, needs to upgrade its transportation fuels. Using the scenario-based analysis method, this paper analyzes how the emission related properties, including antiknock index, and sulfur, olefin, benzene and aromatics contents of gasoline produced by CNPC, vary with the change in the configuration of gasoline production units in the future 5–15 years. The results showed that for CNPC to upgrade its gasoline, the share of fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) naphtha must be reduced, but just increasing reformate or alkylate and isomerate will result in excessive increase in benzene and aromatics contents or a great loss of gasoline octane number. Therefore, CNPC should suitably control the capacity of its FCC units and increase the capacity of reformer, alkylation and isomerization units. Most importantly, CNPC should dramatically expand the capacity of its hydrotreating or non-hydrotreating gasoline upgrading units to decrease the olefin and sulfur contents in FCC gasoline that takes a dominant share of about 80% in the gasoline pool of China.