A major BP refining company retained MathPro Inc. to assess the economics of adopting an advanced fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) design concept in one of its refineries. The study comprised four tasks:

• Develop a model of the refinery in its current configuration, using information provided by the client, and calibrate it to reported refinery operations in the prior period.
• Develop a new, explicit representation of the advanced FCC unit’s and incorporate the new representations in the refinery model.
• Develop and analyze a Base Case with the enhanced model representing refinery operations in a specified future period, with FCC and other process operations and a crude slate and economic premises specified by the client.
• Develop and analyze three Study Cases representing refinery operations incorporating the new design concept, for three alternative refinery input slates, under the same premises as the Base Case, to delineate the economic effects of the proposed design concept.

The primary results of the analysis delineated the economic and technical effects of the new design concept on (i) the relative values of the alternative crude slates, (ii) process capacity utilization and refinery through-put capacity and capacity utilization for each refinery process unit, (iii) individual product volumes, for each crude slate, and (iv) the resulting net revenue attainable with each crude slate, accounting for changes in product volumes.

Results of the analysis were used by the client in determining whether or not to pursue further development and application of the design concept.