Refining is under increasing pressures from a number of sources but perhaps the greatest challenge is to meet the fuels specifications required in future. The main drivers for tighter fuels quality specifications are: Fuels quality and environmental legislation, reduced tail pipe emissions, reduced emissions for refineries and poor refinery structure. As specifications tighten, the refiner is faced conventional refining technologies becoming redundant or obsolete, as refiner is forced to deal with molecules rather than boiling ranges.
Synthetic fuels have seen considerable development in recent years making the technology simpler and more cost effective. The main aspect is the exceptional quality of these products which can easily meet current and future anticipated clean fuels specifications. This paper presents synthetic fuels as the refinery technology for the new millennium. The paper also presents how GTL technology can be utilized by refiners for dealing with the product quality issues in future. The paper also presents the product quality from such a technology in comparison with current and future product specifications. The paper proposes the methodology and the approach for refineries to be followed to find the overall, most cost-effective, catering for uncertainties in legislation for future fuel specifications.
Increasing concern over the pollution of our environment has paved the way for stricter abatement policies to be employed mostly on the national level. The effectiveness of the enforcement of these policies is directly related to the required investment and available technologies. Concerns about air pollutants caused by petroleum-based fuels have prompted government involvement in formulation of stricter environmental regulations and providing tax incentives to use alternative cleaner fuels.
Pollutants of concern include nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO2), sulphur dioxide (SO 2), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), particulate matter (PM) and the formation of pollutants in the atmosphere by photochemical reaction leading to the build-up of ozone in the lower layers of the atmosphere.
Two approaches are generally employed to reduce vehicle pollution:
Altering standards of tail pipe emissions for new vehicles; and
Altering composition of the fuel.
The first approach is the most popular one. The drawback of this approach is that it is a long-term policy that can only have effects when old vehicles are replaced by new ones. Today's new cars produce about 95% less air pollutants (volatile organic compounds, CO, NOx) than new cars in the 1960s[1]. Three-way catalytic converters, direct injection engines, and other advanced automotive technologies have greatly imp