For four decades, Petroleum Refining has guided thousands of readers toward a reliable understanding of the field, and through the years has become the standard text in many schools and universities around the world offering petroleum refining classes, for self-study, training, and as a reference for industry professionals. The sixth edition of this perennial bestseller continues in the tradition set by Jim Gary as the most modern and authoritative guide in the field. Updated and expanded to reflect new technologies, methods, and topics, the book includes new discussion on the business and economics of refining, cost estimation and complexity, crude origins and properties, fuel specifications, and updates on technology, process units, and catalysts. The first half of the book is written for a general audience to introduce the primary economic and market characteristics of the industry and to describe the inputs and outputs of refining. Most of this material is new to this edition and can be read independently or in parallel with the rest of the text. In the second half of the book, a technical review of the main process units of a refinery is provided, beginning with distillation and covering each of the primary conversion and treatment processes. Much of this material was reorganized, updated, and rewritten with greater emphasis on reaction chemistry and the role of catalysis in applications. Petroleum Refining: Technology, Economics, and Markets is a book written for users, the practitioners of refining, and all those who want to learn more about the field.

Throughout the twentieth century the technology employed by the petroleum refining industry has been advancing rapidly, yet it has generally escaped study. Whatever the explanation for its scholarly neglect, the advances that have been secured over the century have enabled the producers of petroleum products to meet the ever-increasing demands for their products throughout the world. No other manufactured goods are so universally and so cheaply available. This book concentrates on the technical changes that have been secured in the second half of this century, using as its basis the main petroleum refining process, Fluid Catalytic Cracking. Both technological and economic aspects are examined over the sixty years of the process's history; and, in a novel attempt, related the one to the other: an accomplishment that reveals more about the technology and the economics rather than either engineering or economic analysis would separately. Technology and economics are connected in the real world: in this study they are connected in their exposition. As in conventional economic history, technological improvements are summarized and their sources and consequences determined. In addition, the long-term pattern of costs and profits is displayed; and regular measurements are taken throughout, so that experience can be seen as the continuous unfolding of industrial progress.