In downstream facilities the presence of testing labs is critical to ensure the quality of end products, Refining & Petrochemicals Middle East investigates regional labs, testing capbilities and equipment ranges.
In the petrochemicals and refining industry plant operators need to ensure the quality of their products, as well as its conformity to the international standards. To ensure these standards are met all major downstream producers’ have laboratories in-house to make the necessary tests and analysis.
In refineries and petrochemical plants the laboratory will mainly concentrate on testing the in-process samples and final products.
“Quality control is one of the most important functions within any refinery or petrochemical plant,” says Dr. Hans-Friedrich Enderle, manager for physical and mechanical application testing at LyondellBasell’s Hoechst Industrial Park, in Frankfurt, Germany.
“To ensure the best quality, we undertake both mechanical and chemicals tests,” he explains. Every laboratory usually performs the analysis of feed, intermediate and final products of the plant.
“Typical analyses includes checking of chemical and physical properties such as sulphur content, water content, trace impurities like oxygenates or inert gases, metals content, flash point, vapour pressure, octane number and so on,” says Raj Makhamale, marketing manager at the Dubai based Gulf Bio Analytic Company.
In a refinery, the main tests are based on the products cut in the distillation or cracker units.
“The tests vary from density, flash point, vapour pressure, viscosity, and pour point to “high-end” analysis such as distillation, PIONA, carbon residue, and cold properties, for example,” says Ravi Parameswaran, Middle East laboratories manager, based at Intertek’s Sharjah operation.
For the production of petrochemical products, the intermediate analyses mainly assess the process conditions and the product formulation. “Composition of the product is determined in stages through gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC-MS) which identifies specific compounds,” explains Parameswaran.
Batches of the finished product are certified according to the results of tests conducted against the complete specification for the product.
“Product specifications depend on customer requirements and can vary from country to country. As an example, for gasoline, the test requirements include distillation, density, sulphur, aromatics and olefins, oxygenates, and mercaptan sulphur,” says Parameswaran. “Whereas jet fuels used in aircrafts, the tests would include density, distillation, freeze point, conductivity, and lubricity,” he explains.
While the majority of the analysis can be done in a normal laboratory environment, there are exceptions.
“Some special testing is done inside a fume chamber to ensure that dangerous fumes are exhausted out. Typically, the plant will have its own internal protocols for the feed and intermediates and a second set of protocols for the final product which is similar to that desired by the buyer of the products,” says Makhamale.
All tests are conducted within a set of prescribed conditions. “Generally, a laboratory follows internationally approved procedures such as ASTM, IP, UOP, BS, and AASHTO for conducting the tests,” says Parameswaran.
Some of the process analysis procedures are also developed by licensors such as UOP, or companies such as BP or Shell. “These methods are developed and validated by the issuing authority based on their research, validation and “round robin” test data collated during tests that have been conducted,” Parameswaran adds.
In order to perform these tests, laboratory operators use different types of equipment. Mechanical equipment is used to measure physical properties of petrochemical or petroleum products; the chemical properties are used to identify contaminants or the composition of the mixture.
“Instruments used for analysis are gas chromatographs, inductively coupled plasma, mass spectrometers, X-Ray fluorescence, FTIR, UV-VIS, distillation units, flash point testers, viscosity meters, HPLC or Ion chromatographs and many more equipment,” says Makhamale.
The selection of the laboratory equipment depends on the tests it has to perform and the test method that will be used; this often depends on the composition of the sample.
“As the test methods and the product composition differ, the equipments used for the analysis will also differ,” says Parameswaran.
“Some equipment used in the testing, such as density meters and gas chromatographs, can accommodate several test methods and can be modified, or fine-tuned, to meet the test conditions of the sample. Accordingly, the equipment can be used in refineries and petrochemical plants,” Parameswaran explains.
These are critical instruments for producing accurate, reproducible and reliable results. Not all manufacturers of instruments can offer solutions that are required by the downstream industry.
“Wrong results can lower the price of the product or create damage to very expensive catalysts used in the process. This loss can run into millions of dollars,” says Makhamale.
In order to avoid these loses, the buyer of laboratory equipment has to have a good understanding of the test method to be employed, along with other key factors such as safety considerations, limits of detection, frequency of the analyses, and the laboratory set-up according to the new test requirements.
“Armed with the answers to these questions, the buyer should be looking for brand name, quality of the equipment, supporting test methods, such as ASTM, UOP and IP, buyer’s relationship with the manufacturer many other factors,” says Parameswaran.
“Based on this information the buyer can assess the options and, according to budget, decide on the right equipment,” concludes Parameswaran.
