Major forces will reshape the refining industry in the coming decades. Chemical engineers will play a crucial role in this evolution.
Petroleum refining clearly is a vital industry. It converts crude oil and natural gas to a variety of fuels, lubricants, and petrochemical products that help improve the quality of life. Globally, it processes more material than any other industry. Total refinery throughput is about 3,500 million tons/year, over four times that of the next largest industry, steel. The scale and significance of refining, however, does not shield the industry from considerable changes and challenges - indeed, it makes successful responses to them even more crucial.
The 20th Century certainly saw a tremendous transformation of the industry. In the early 1900s, before gasoline-powered cars became commonplace, the primary objective of refining was to produce the maximum amount of kerosene for lighting from each barrel of crude. As Figure 1 indicates, coal was the primary energy source of the booming new industrial age (1). Who then would have anticipated the ascendance of oil? Yet, as the figure underscores, oil now dominates our energy mix.
