Dangerous environmental consequences and market unpredictability of fossil fuels have necessitated the need for sustainable large-scale production of biofuel in Nigeria. Unrefined palm oil (UPO) is a significant product of commercially available oil palm plants in the country. This study experimentally investigates the production of biodiesel from refined, bleached and deodorised (RBD) palm olein extracted from UPO obtained from batch reactors. The transesterification process of the RBD palm olein with methanol and in the presence of potassium hydroxide (KOH) catalyst produced biodiesel with a 62.5% yield, thus confirming its feasibility for mass production. The derived biodiesel has properties equivalent to ASTM D792 standard for biodiesel fuels.

Globally, the issue of implementing efficient and effective asset management systems has been a challenge for most companies, especially those operating in the oil and gas industry due to the complex nature of their operations. In recent years, with the decline of oil prices, market conditions have become so competitive such that even a few minutes of downtime of equipment could lead to significant loss of revenue. A case study of an Industrial Company is presented, with the goal of assessing its current asset management system. Based on the evaluation of the current asset management system practiced by the Company, it was noted that there are significant gaps in the current practice, and the Company is yet to leverage advanced technological tools in managing its assets. Specifically, the Company does not currently have an appropriate system of tracking and monitoring its assets location, and utilization, despite the fact that the assets move from one location to another in fulfilling customer’s needs. A Real-Time Equipment Monitoring system is developed for the industrial company using GPS, Barcodes and RFID technology to provide information relating to assets location, status, condition and maintenance history which led to 30.8% increase in assets utilization. Generally, a benefit analysis carried out shows that the new system will always provide real-time observation data and instrument parameters for maintenance engineers and ultimately company managers for effective decision-making at strategic levels.

Industrially, unprocessed crude oil has little or no value. Hence, there is need for a country to have operational petroleum refineries. According to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation annual bulletin, it is expected to have a total refining capacity of 445,000 barrels of oil per day from Nigeria’s four conventional refineries. However, the country still records scarcity of refined products as none of the refineries can boast of working above 60% of its design capacity. In an attempt to provide, a solution to the worsening scenario above, modular refineries setup at strategic positions within the country can help. This will boost refining capacity. Although different modular topping refinery configurations exist, this paper examines the simple, pre-flash and the pre-flash pump around reflux scheme in terms of maximum product yield using the Niger Delta Petroleum Resources, Bonny Light, Bonny Medium, Brass and Qua Iboe crude assay. Crude oil characterization using HYSYS® ASPEN was done based on their true boiling points to determine the maximum liquid volume fraction of the different distillates. Simulations of the different crude assay were carried out on the different topping refinery configurations highlighting the variation between characterized and simulated volumetric cuts. The result shows that Niger Delta Petroleum Resources crude will favour the production of liquefied petroleum gas, light naphtha, and diesel. Bonny medium crude will favour the production of gas oil and residue oil while qua iboe and brass will favour the production of kerosene and heavy naphtha, respectively. The best scheme for different distillates was also determined.

Objective: Generally, Petroleum refineries are put in place to convert or refine unprocessed crude oil into more useful products using both physical separation and chemical conversion processes. Albeit, different refining unit are subsets of the physical separation category. The atmospheric and vacuum distillation unit seems to be more prominent. Conventionally, the crude atmospheric residue cannot be further heated in an atmospheric condition due to: coke formation, pipes plugging, thermal cracking and straining of the furnace. A vacuum distillation column is therefore required. Methods: This study, therefore, focuses on the limitations, “over straining of the furnace to provide the necessary heat” and “non-reliance on the additional re-boiler since it only acts as a heat exchanger”. An integrated distillation column with a capacity of 10,000 barrel per day was therefore designed for the concurrent production of all distillate cuts. Results: This was achieved through the introduction of a submerged combustion zone at the stripping section of the column where Naphtha was utilized as the source of fuel. Verification of this approach was also conducted using Autodesk invention software and a finite element analysis tool to evaluate both thermal and computational fluid analysis impact. Overall, all derived distilled products met the American Society for Testing and Material Standard Table 6.