The Hydrocarbon Segment Post Reform has changed substantially in the country. While on the one end the sector was opened up to private players who changed the scale and complexity of the refineries. The Private Sector Undertaning (PSU) refineries too began to look at reasonably large installations.

Sanjay Gupta - Evolving Configurations in the Hydrocarbon sector In India and African Subcontinent
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Around Early 90’s Refineries of 6 MMTPA were conceived with some secondary processing capacity. The Bottoms mostly looked at Bitumen and Visbreaker. The Fuel Oil make was high and the product specifications conformed at best to EURO II & III norms. The Emphasis at this stage remained to maximize LPG and Diesel. Kerosene too was recovered as a product.

Figure 1 - Early Grassroot Refinery in the 1990s

The next Phase of development came towards the end of 2000 through 2004. The Refineries were expanded to add another 6 – 9 MMTPA capacity such that the total capacity of the refineries ranged between 12-15 MMTPA. The key considerations in this period was to upgrade the product quality to Euro IV and maximize conversion. Vis-breaker and bitumen were to be phased out and entire bottoms of the existing and expansion projects were upgraded in a Delayed Coker unit to maximize distillates. Since Diesel and LPG were to be maximized a full conversion Hydrocracker was introduced in the complex. The trend for kerosene phasing also began to emerge. Diesel of the existing and expansion was upgraded to Euro IV/VI.
 

Figure 2 - Early 2000 Expanded Refinery with High-Quality Product Upgradation - Increased Conversion & Complexity

In the next phase of development an Aromatic complex and an Olefin complex was added. All Heavy Naphtha (HN) as routed to the Aromatic Complex and surplus Light Naphtha (LN) from the refinery was routed to Steam Cracker. To cater to the capacity requirement Light and Heavy naphtha was sourced from other refineries and integrated respectively to the Olefin and Aromatic complex.

Figure 3 - 2007-2008 Horizontal Addition of Aromatic & Olefin Complex - Horizontal Expansion of Complex

Between 2007 to 2016 the Refinery configurations altered as the natural demand of the HC plants altered directionally from distillates to augment more and more petrochemicals. The Vacuum Gasoil Hydro-treater - Petro-FCCU (PFCCU) as the secondary processing and Delayed Coker as the bottoms upgrader remained one of the favored configurations. The plants now addressed Euro VI specifications, with increased natural gas availability the Hydrogen Plant as well as CPP switch over to gas as fuel. LN displaced found way into isomerization units  or emerged as the Cracker Feedstock.

Figure 4 - 2008-2016 Changing Trend of Maximising Petrochemicals & Rationalising Diesel - Increasing Complexity

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