Types Of Refinery

A refinery is a production facility composed of a group of chemical engineering unit processes and unit operations used for refining certain materials or converting raw material into products of value.

The various types of refineries include:

Oil refinery: Converts petroleum crude oil into high-octane motor fuel (gasoline/petrol), diesel oil, liquefied petroleum gases (LPG), jet aircraft fuel, kerosene, heating fuel oils, lubricating oils, asphalt and petroleum coke.

Sugar refinery: Converts sugar cane and sugar beets into crystallized sugar and sugar syrups.


Natural gas processing plant: Purifies and converts raw natural gas into residential, commercial and industrial fuel gas, and also recovers natural gas liquids (NGL) such as ethane, propane, butanes and pentanes.


Salt refinery: Cleans salt (NaCl), produced by the solar evaporation of sea water, followed by washing and re-crystallization.

Various metal refineries such as alumina, copper, gold, lead, nickel, silver, uranium, and zinc.


Vegetable oil refinery

A typical oil refinery

Oil refinery The image below is a schematic flow diagram of a typical oil refinery that depicts the various unit processes and the flow of intermediate product streams that occurs between the inlet crude oil feedstock and the final end products. The diagram depicts only one of the literally hundreds of different oil refinery configurations. It does not include any of the usual refinery facilities providing utilities such as steam, cooling water, and electric power as well as storage tanks for crude oil feedstock and for intermediate products and end products.