Scientific & Technical Articles

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This study investigates recent trends and effects in business cases for petroleum refineries throughout the United States, with a focus on gasoline price effects in recent years. Case studies were developed for three specific business cases. In addition to reviewing refinery closures, we explore historical events that affected Oregon’s gas prices. Finally, we propose a series of refinery closure indicators based on the case studies. By reviewing historical events and impacts on the gasoline supply chain, this study may help inform future discussions on Oregon’s energy and fuel supply resilience.

Low-carbon liquid fuels play a key role in energy system decarbonization scenarios. This study uses a multi-sector capacity expansion model of the contiguous United States to examine fuels production in deeply decarbonized energy systems. Our analysis evaluates how the shares of biofuels, synthetic fuels, and fossil liquid fuels change under varying assumptions about resource constraints (biomass and CO2 sequestration availability), fuel demand distributions, and supply flexibility to produce different fuel products.

Separation of hydrocarbon isomers with closely matched physicochemical properties remains an energetically demanding challenge in the petrochemical refineries. This study presents a comparative analysis of three methods: the fractional distillation, the Molex process, and the Levi-Blow (LB) technique. Using experimentally validated thermodynamic data and heat-transfer estimates, we quantify the energy expenditure and number of cycles required to achieve ultrahigh-purity separation.