Rethinking Petroleum Products Certification

Abstract EN

Facing various challenges in the everchanging refining landscape, it is essential that refiners raise their operations to new levels of performance.

Advances in in-line blending (ILB) technology accuracy and reliability have encouraged refiners to take a step forward.

Having ILB as a precursor, a new methodology is in concern: the so-called in-line certification (ILC) procedure.

Blending processes make use of in-line measurements which, at least in principle, can be used to certificate the product, if the precision and accuracy of available in-line measurements are comparable to measurements provided by standard off-line tests.

Such procedure may allow for significant reduction in refinery’s tank farming and product inventory, increase of process flexibility, and reliability with benefits to company image.

The main limitations for real-world ILC applications in the oil industry remain at the legal and technological levels.

This paper proposes novel concepts and foundations of a basic in-line certification model for petroleum products regarding current interdisciplinary challenges and promising solutions.