What We Do

What We Do: The Refining Process

Chevron's Richmond Refinery processes over 240,000 barrels of crude oil a day in the manufacture of petroleum products and chemicals used to manufacture many other useful products. The Refinery's primary products are motor gasoline, jet fuel, diesel fuel and lubricants.

The refining process starts in the distillation towers. Here, liquids and vapors are separated into components according to weight and boiling point. The lighter, more valuable fuels are separated from the heavier products. From the crude units, nearly all of the products are then treated to remove sulfur and nitrogen, primarily by "hydrotreating." The resulting sulfur is recovered and sold for industrial uses. The nitrogen is converted to ammonia for sale to the fertilizer industry.

Only about 40 percent of crude oil is comprised of the ingredients for the high-quality fuels we produce. The remaining components of crude are heavy, poor performing fuels prior to further treatment. To convert these heavy fuels to usable transportation fuels requires a process known as conversion or cracking. Using cracking units, the large molecules in heavy fuels are converted into smaller molecules, which we can use to make transportation fuels.

At the Chevron Richmond Refinery, we have two main types of cracking units:

• The Fluidized Catalytic Cracking Unit (FCC), or "cat cracker," cracks the heavy material into gasoline, the most demanded transportation fuel.
• The Hydrocracking Unit is another catalytic cracking unit. Chevron's patented Hydrocracking process is called an ISOMAX Unit. The catalyst in the ISOMAX is designed to crack heavy material into gasoline and jet fuel.

At this stage, the molecules have been cracked, but these fuels are still not ready to power an automobile or jet engine. Gasoline and jet are a blend of many components and so some of the products from the cracking units must be arranged and rearranged to burn cleanly and with better performance. The Catalytic Reforming and Alkylation processes result in higher octane fuels designed to meet the needs of today's engines.

Finally, after more than 200 hydrocarbons and additives have been blended into the fuel, the finished products are held in storage tanks, ready to be shipped via tanker, truck or pipeline to our customers. We are proud to produce the latest generation of clean-burning gasoline that meets the most stringent requirements in the world.