As early as the first century, the Chinese were refining crude oil for use as an energy source. The Chinese were among the first civilizations to refine oil. Oil refineries are an essential part of the petroleum industry's downstream sector. Since December 2008, the world’s largest oil refinery has been the Jamnagar Refinery owned by Reliance Industries, located in Gujarat, India, with a processing capacity of 1.24 million barrels (197,000 m 3) per day. In many ways, oil refineries use much of the technology and can be thought of, as types of chemical plants.

Oil refineries are typically large, sprawling industrial complexes with extensive piping running throughout, carrying streams of fluids between large chemical processing units, such as distillation columns. In 2020, the total capacity of global refineries for crude oil was about 101.2 million barrels per day. There is usually an oil depot at or near an oil refinery for the storage of incoming crude oil feedstock as well as bulk liquid products. The crude oil feedstock has typically been processed by an oil production plant. Petrochemicals feedstock like ethylene and propylene can also be produced directly by cracking crude oil without the need of using refined products of crude oil such as naphtha. The world's largest oil refinery, Jamnagar Refinery in Gujarat, IndiaĪn oil refinery or petroleum refinery is an industrial process plant where petroleum (crude oil) is transformed and refined into useful products such as gasoline (petrol), diesel fuel, asphalt base, fuel oils, heating oil, kerosene, liquefied petroleum gas and petroleum naphtha.

Petrochemical processes handbook pdf