1.A.1.b - Petroleum Refining

Source catagory Petroleum Refining (1.A.1.b) comprises both refinery heating plants and electricity and heat production of refinery power plants.

Refinery processes are very complex. Therefore the development of an adequate calculation method is demanding. Since plant specific data are not complete and partly contradictory, a plant specific reporting is not possible. Data is used to determine fuel specific emission factors as general basis of the calculation model. However, in reality, a large number of fuels and waste fuels with different fuel characteristics is used for combustion processes. Insofar the calculation model is limited. Only some refinery power plants use wet desulfurisation in order to decrease sulfur emissions. Usually the fuels mix ensures the compliance with the limit values.

Fuel inputs for electricity production in refinery power stations are included in Energy Balance line 12 (“Industrial power stations (only for electricity)”). Energy Balance line 38 (“Refineries”) shows the energy consumption (for heat production) of refineries. ¹⁾

Fuel inputs for heat production in refinery power plants and for bottom heating in refinery processes are derived from these figures.

Fuel inputs for electricity and heat production in petroleum refining are determined by combining the national statistics of the Federal statistical Office (DESTATIS) and the Federal Office of Economics and Export Control (BAFA) ²⁾.

Energy inputs in facilities for used-oil processing are reported under 1.A.1.c - Manufacture Of Solid Fuels And Other Energy Industries sector.

The emission factors for refinery power plants have been taken from the research project “Determination and evaluation of emission factors for combustion systems in Germany for the years 1995, 2000 and 2010” (Rentz et al., 2002)³⁾.

A detailed description of the procedure is presented in Chapter: 1.A.1.a - Public Electricity And Heat Production.

Emission factors are available for different fuel types and combustion technologies. The distinction between refinery power plants and bottom heating in refinery processes is necessary since bottom heating systems have considerably higher specific emissions.

Results of a research project which has to evaluate data from emission declarations for the years 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016 for all refineries will provide refinery gas emission factor data. The first results show the following range:

Table 1: Range of emission factors, in kg/TJ

Before the new emission factors can be used, it has to be checked which data are representative. Further quality checks are necessary in order to reproduce the trend correctly.

Since 1990, fuel consumption has shown a slightly increasing overall trend. While some relevant installations have been decommissioned since 1990 - especially in the territory of the former GDR - production increased nevertheless. And while installation efficiencies were improved, increased production of lighter petroleum products and intensified hydrosulphurisation, which led to increases in specific fuel consumptions.

Annual fluctuations of all fuel types can be explained as the result of differences in production quantities.

The maximum production of petroleum products to date occurred in 2005, as a result of a shortfall in capacity in the USA, which led to an increase in imports. Thereafter, production decreased by reducing excess capacities all over Europe.

The increasing use of natural gas in recent years led to decreasing emissions of all pollutants (except NO_x ).

The following chart gives an overview of the fuel consumption in the refinery sector:

At the time of compiling the inventory, national energy balance is only available provisionally. Therefore, the finalization of the energy balance for 2023 led to recalculations. Moreover, for the purpose of improving data quality, national energy balances go under revisions every two years (for the years starting from 2003) through fine-tuning of the computational models, consideration of new statistics or re-allocation of activity data. Due to the revisions on the input data for submission 2026, recalculations took place ⁴⁾.

It is planned to revise emission factors for all pollutants on the basis of the above-mentioned project.