Lyondell Petrochemical Co., Houston, this month will become the first major U.S. refiner to produce gasoline from used lubricating oil on a commercial scale.
Lyondell will begin recycling about 500 b/d of used oil into gasoline and heating oil at its 265,000 b/sd Houston refinery. Other oil recycling programs typically blend used oil into lubricants or industrial fuels, the company said.
Bob G. Gower, Lyondell president and chief executive officer, said no capital outlay is needed to make Lyondell's select refinery feedstock program possible. The used oil recycling program is an expansion of a program in which the company recycled certain processing wastes it produced.
REFINING PLANS
Lyondell at first will buy used oil feedstock from large lubricant users: railroads, commercial transportation fleets, and large industrial plants.
Producing gasoline or heating oil from used lube oil overcomes a common downfall of recycling programs: lack of a marketable end product.
Lyondell will process the used lubricants with intermediate product streams to its delayed coking unit. The refinery's delayed coking unit has a charge capacity of about 40,000 b/d (OGJ, Dec. 23, 1991, p. 33).
Small amounts of heavy metals often found in used lubricating oils are captured in the coke.
But Lyondell said the heavy metal content of coke produced by the delayed coker is not increased significantly by reprocessing 500 b/d of used oil. Lyondell reprocessed about 10,000 bbl of used lube oil into gasoline and heating oil last December.
Environmental Protection Agency data show that only about 2% of the 31 million bbl/year of used oil generated in the U.S. is rerefined. About 58% is burned for fuel, and 32% goes to landfills.
Gower said properly equipped U.S. refineries could substitute used lube oils for crude oil feedstock on a 1:1 basis without decreasing gasoline production.
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