Professor Sandro Macchietto and PhD student Francesco Coletti have devised a way to increase the efficiency of key steps in the oil extraction process

Oil refineries take crude oil from drilling pipelines and extract its useful constituent parts – gas, petrol, aircraft fuel and engine oil – using a series of heating and cooling steps. Professor Sandro Macchietto and PhD student Francesco Coletti (both Chemical Engineering) have devised a way to increase the efficiency of this complex process. They formed Imperial spinout company Hexxcell, based on their technology, in July 2012.

What have you developed?

Key to the invention is novel software models and a test rig to simulate aspects of refining. When heat exchange steps occur in oil refineries, you are left with oil deposits that are hard to remove and create considerable heat wastage. In order to study these effects, Hexxcell co-founder Emeritus Professor Geoffrey Hewitt (Chemical Engineering) created an advanced experimental rig that measures some of the properties of oil in heat exchangers. We use the data the rig produces to estimate what’s going to happen during operations and, combined with our computer simulations, predict refinery inefficiencies up to 15 months ahead. This, in turn, helps us to optimise the design of heat exchangers and heat recovery systems.

How is this different from current methods?

At present, plant operators can get simple projections based onassumptions from previous models but accurate, long-term predictions, like ours, are basically unheard of. Now our experimental rig allows us to take measurements at near industrial conditions, a difficult task in oil refineries that work at very high temperatures and pressure.

What are the benefits of this technology?

Oil refineries consume around eight per cent of the world’s oil resources just to run themselves, making them responsible for two to three per cent of global CO2 emissions. So there is a big incentive for trying to increase energy recovery in these systems. Systems produced with our techniques could achieve efficiency gains of up to 15 per cent, meaning energy sources last longer and waste is reduced. It should also lead to lower prices for consumers.

—Kailey Nolan, Imperial Innovations

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